Hi, I’m vegan too and on similar meds. Personally I’ve found the ADF more helpful as I too can do better with little to no good on a fast day. I’m sort of all or nothing, lol. That’s kind of how I got into this mess 🙂
The psychological aspect of knowing that you’re a matter of hours from regular eating makes it easier for me to keep it going and because I’ve fasted, (my blood sugar and insulin sensitivity seems better as the hunger isn’t as urgent or desperate as it is when I eat in my regular fashion) the next day I don’t eat huge amounts as I expected to do.

Hope this helps, and best of luck on your journey.

I have tried both, and they both have work. I am a strict vegetarian, everything I cook is vegan but I do sometimes eat cheese as well. I should have been on meds for anxiety and other mental health issues if they had allowed me to cope with seeing a doctor. The best thing I ever did is stop eating pasta and bread and start ADF. I started to feel better immediately and now a year on the dreadful anxiety is a thing of the past. And I could probably cope with a psychiatrist now I don’t need one anymore! The weight I lost is a bonus but not the most important benefit. I lost a fairly consistent ten pounds a month for the first ten months and then a bit less at the end. ADF was brilliant, it fell into a really good rhythm and I discovered how much better I feel when I don’t eat but I was able to fully cover all nutritional bases at the same time by eating plenty of vegetables even on fast days. 800 calories lets you eat a very satisfying amount of veg and pulses. I hit a plateau at one point which was when I swapped to the blood sugar diet and had only the 800 calories every day for about four weeks which got the weight loss going again but I really began to feel hard done by. Being able to promise yourself food the next day on ADF is enormously helpful for your mood and mood is enormously important for losing weight. I found plateaus always coincided with stress and episodes of low mood. Luckily fasting and successful weight loss generates its own feel good factor so it was only hormones and outside stress that made difficulties and my baseline state throughout was really cheerful and positive. It can be difficult at first while you wean yourself off some of the addictive foods like sugar and carbs that have clamouring gut bacteria frantically sending chemical signals out to make you eat them for them but that settles within weeks and then hunger levels drop and you start appreciating the food you do eat more as it tastes better and is more satisfying as the bad bacteria are replaced with ones who like healthier food.
It seems to me that the best option is doing ADF using the blood sugar baseline of a Mediterranean type diet, leaving all non veg carbs and potatoes out of your diet except for the less sweet fruits like apples, pears and berries, and eating plenty of pulses, nuts and seeds and olive oil. It certainly worked for me even at the higher fast day limit of 800 calories which I ate in the evening in one go. I used a short eating window on the feast days too to stop me over compensating and because I feel better emptier anyway.
I am an all or nothing person too. But one satisfying meal worked and I think it kept things ticking over better to have daily nutrient needs met. A recent study has shown that 800 calories triggers far fewer cravings than 1200 and so is easier to stick to which is why the BSD is possible to follow even for quite a long time.

Hi,
I am quite certain that it is the naked carbs in pasta and bread that destroy my mood. I don’t worry about carbs in veg or fruit as those are nicely wrapped up with fibre and don’t seem to affect me badly. The simple carbs also leave me totally fatigued while I digest them. I had full blown fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue until I stopped eating them. I might cope better with them now my blood chemistry has obviously righted itself but I don’t want to take that risk. It clearly suits me far better to burn fat rather than glycogen. I avoid eating anything (except recently fruit which I have begun to crave never having liked it much previously, and which to my surprise I cope with fine while active, maybe the fruitarians have a point about it being easily digestible) until I can sit down and digest without having to exert myself. I suspect the gut bacteria that prefer wheat and other simple carbs are the real culprit where mood is concerned. The gut contains lots of neurotransmitters and psychoactive hormones are made there by bacteria. A lot of research is being done on this at the moment, there are hopes of developing phychobacteria to treat mental illness in the future. At the moment the best thing to do is promote good bacteria by generally improving ones biome by eating well, lots of prebiotics – pulses are great for this,as is sauerkraut – and by avoiding feeding the bad ones with sugar and naked carbs. Fructose is bad by itself but bound up in whole fruit it doesn’t get turned straight to fat in the same way, but it is better to avoid exotic fruit while trying to lose weight and juice is always a bad idea. As is juicing veg. The cell walls are our friends, providing long chain fibre which feed good bacteria and slowing down carbohydrate processing and avoiding insulin spikes . Destroying them with a machine is stupid.

Why not add more colourful veg to your diet. You will be lacking many nutrients on just legumes and green veg. Eat a rainbow! And don’t be afraid of olive oil. Stir fried veg tastes so much better. I am lavish with it and my big weight loss clearly shows it doesn’t hinder weight loss. It is a big part of why the Mediterranean type diet works so well. Fat does not get metabolized to fat easily, farnless easily than carbohydrates. Especially on a vegan diet where fat is already likely to be in short supply. Fatty acids are essential. My aunt made herself extremely ill by cutting fat out of her diet entirely. Oil will also help with making your meals more satisfying and mean you don’t require such a large volume of it. I certainly don’t subscribe to the high fat fad but olive oil is wonderful stuff. And fat from seeds and nuts is important too.

One more thing. It is as well to separate exercise from weight loss in your mind. Exercise is great, but weight loss does not require it. In fact exercise makes you hungrier and damage to muscles can make them hold water which keeps your weight higher and can be demotivating and lead to frustration and thus to failure to stick to eating plans. Exercise for its own sake, not to promote weight loss. If your priority is weight loss concentrate on that not on exercise. You can cut far more calories out of your diet than you can burn through exercise, the most important thing is to eat less. Most calories used are used by your basal metabolism not via exercise. A fat sedentary person burns more calories than a thin active one.

I hope the BSD works well for you.