Livethelife, I have recently started 5:2 as well. While I am not vegan, I am a vegetarian Who eats a lot of plant food
On my fast day, I had oatmeal for breakfast; Clementine and A 100 calorie packet of almond; and for dinner 1 ounce of homemade wheat bread and a smear of hummus.

And lots and lots of water and Tea, even though I am not a tea drinker!

I’ll pop over and have a read after I finish eating my bowl of chicken salad and my high fat yogurt for desert.

Hi livethelife. I’m a healthy vegan – but quite a bit overweight. Would very much like to connect! No one I know is doing 5:2, and moving in with a friend on Sunday (temporarily) who I know is very anti-5:2, so I need all the support I can get!
I had my first fast day on Thursday to get into it again, and am now fasting properly from today. Thinking of doing Mondays and Thursdays.
How are you holding up?

I lost over 20 pounds in 2014, but then life got in the way, I went off the plan and gained it back plus another 20 pounds after going to uni. Ironically, this is also when I went vegan.
Looking to lose 60 pounds, if not more. But I am very excited and optimistic about this!

VeggieAthletic, while I agree that a vegan diet is the best one (for humans, the environment, the animals…. basically for everyone) I don’t agree with you on eating all you want and not worrying about calories. While I have seen it work for some people, and while I believe in the science of a high carb, low fat vegan diet, it just did not work for me … 🙁
5:2 coupled with a healthy vegan diet is the way to go for me.

Best to one and all. Alex 🙂

PBH, nice job. More polite that I would have been.

Hello WFPB followers! After reading “The China Study,” I too went vegan two years ago hoping to lose weight. Although I felt a lot healthier and energetic, I didn’t lose any weight despite exercising every day. I concluded I was still eating too much. Everything changed after I went on the 5:2 IF diet. I’ve miraculously lost 7 pounds in 2 weeks. So far, it’s been easy for me and I don’t feel deprived of food. My few hunger pangs go away with just a few sips of water. On my non-fast days, I observe portion control and no longer feel the urge to overeat. The thing that makes WFPB diet work for me, is that I press the water out of my tofu, then marinate it. The tofu then has the consistency of hard cheese and tastes very savory. I also occasionally use meat substitutes such as soyrizo, seitan, or soy meat to stave off meat cravings. I look forward to staying on the 5:2 IF diet longer term to take off more pounds until I am a healthy weight.

Hi ABC1: Congratulations on your 6.7 kilo weight loss! I’m Chinese-American, so I was used to eating tasteless tofu straight out of the package. Instead, I learned from reading vegan cookbooks that pressing the water out of tofu and marinating them tastes much better. I found using extra firm tofu, more cheaply found in Asian supermarkets, works best. You can wrap the tofu in towels and press them between a plate and a heavy pan. Or make life easier and buy a tofu press, which you can find on any Internet marketplace like Amazon.com. I cheat a little on my vegan diet, and marinate the tofu with fish sauce (which really doesn’t have any fish parts in it) and liquid smoke, which makes it taste very savory like meat. If you get good quality tofu, the tofu press won’t smash it to smithereens, and then the pieces come out firm like cheese. I’m sorry, I don’t know what is Cauldron tofu. I’m also very impressed you make your own tofu, but I haven’t a clue how to make it. Maybe you can find tofu at your local Chinese or Japanese restaurant?

Also, if you like herbal tea, you might like Good Earth’s sweet and spicy tea. Amazingly, it does taste sweet and it has no calories, and absolutely no sugar or fake sugar. It tastes better at room temperature. It fixes my sugar cravings. It also comes with caffeine and caffeine free. Best of luck with your 5:2 diet!

We have a fellow American in here! Well I have lived in London for a few years now. No soyrizo here 🙁

Fresh tofu from a Chinese shop is amazing. It already has a slight cheese taste. Cauldron pieces are marinated and baked. So try looking for baked tofu- its a lot denser and higher in calories but tastes great. I know vianna makes some thats good. Tofu is also good for tofu scramble. Where are you in France? You might want to visit Loving Hut for inspiration and sometimes they have a shop to buy their products.

Some brands of plant milks always curdle.I dont take Earl Grey with milk but Provomel is always doing that in black tea. Try alpro brand. Yogi tea also have a “snack tea” range designed to reduce craving for sweets.

I need a good dhal recipie, suggestions?

-C

This is the link to the dahl recipe I use. Hope the link works. I put favourite recipes into myfitnesspal as it works out all the calories for me.

thttp://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/view/24085673266797

Hi I’m vegetarian with vegan partner so eat a lot of vegan foo (although he works away so I’m more like part-time vegan I suppose!). I did a few months of 5:2 last year and lost about 10 pounds, which was great – but then started a new job and then Christmas etc and gradually put a lot of the weight back on. Woke up today and decided to give it another go, so have done a successful fast day today.

My tip for fast days is homemade soup – fills you up and doesn’t have the sugar content of bought soups – I also agree with the other posters about daal – I use a tweaked version of Jamie Oliver red lentil and spinach daal.

But – my biggest tip is to plan exactly what you are going to eat on a fast day before you start so you have something to stick to! Otherwise I find I just give in to whatever food is in the fridge!

Hey! I know this has beenup for a while but I just came across this forum and wanted to say hi.

I’m a HCLF Vegan just starting out on the 5:2 diet. I tried for a while to eat high carb low fat and eat as much as I wanted, but I found that some days I would end up eating too much or would go out and have ‘junk food’ which would be higher fat and then my calorie intake for the day would be crazy. As would my macros. Unless you eat only whole foods and hardly any avocado (I looove avo!) it’s hard to stay 80 carb 10 fat 10 protein.

I agree that it’s good to eat until you’re satisfied but I just don’t believe that you can eat unlimited calories (more than you’re burning off) and still lose weight… It just doesn’t make sense. In the books I read about the diet, it always suggests doing a LOT of exercise to accompany the diet. So yeah I agree with you alexa5 100%!

I just wanted to share a youtube channel I found with you guys, I found her the other day when trying to find a vegan also doing this diet. She’s got some really good day in the life videos to give some ideas about what to eat and when 😀 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDJ59S9m-UIuuIzV6m2075A/videos (If the link doesn’t work, search for Olivia Budgen).

Any advice would be appreciated and it’d be really lovely to have a vegan friend to do this with! I feel like everyone in the vegan community shuns calorie restriction so it’s a touchy subject and hard to find anyone else like minded. I’ve looked into fasting and the results seem amazing, how have you guys found it so far?

Hope I don’t come across as rude but can you give me examples of vegan foods that are “wrong foods”?

P.S. Bigbooty, Arnotts biscuits are vegan, made with hydrogenated oils, white flour and white sugar.

I just get the impression that one would really have to try real hard to eat unhealthy being a vegan. Wow so just get rid of the sugar and my pet hate, grain based foods and youre laughing. Stick to whole foods.

Hi, I eat Whole Food Plant Based and have done for about 5 years. I have a stubborn 12 kgs clinging on since menopause. I’m doing IF, mostly 18 / 6 and I’ll see if that shifts it.

bigbooty it’s very possible to be vegan and eat unhealthy…think chips and coke!

Violet,

When you say youre doing IF 16/8 are you incorporating a calorific deficit? If not then your 16/8 really isn’t achieving anything. When I first started doing 5:2 I would water fast for 2 consecutive days (60 hours). I would just enter ketosis after about 60 hours. I still water fast every Monday (36 hours). I now enter ketosis after 24 hours, but this is after many months of intermittent fasting and a lot of weight loss. This is not guess work on my part as I measure this with a keto meter. If you are overweight and eating carb dense foods then it is highly unlikely that are coming close to depleting your glycogen levels within a 16 hour period. There is no magical way of losing weight, you have to run a deficit.

bigbooty 18/6 just suits me, my new scales are on order so I’m unsure about the weight loss numbers but the centimetres are dropping nicely. I also do a longer fast now and then if the notion takes me.

P.S. I was anti-refined foods when on the plant based vegan diet. My only source of sugar was fresh whole fruit, though I could easily sit and eat 4 oranges for breakfast! Even though I ate a lot of whole fruit, I didn’t put on any extra weight and was quite slim. I ate grains, though only whole grains.

I am fairly sure my son’s dental issues may be due to his vegan diet. He has some substantial tooth loss on the molars. As a child he ate a standard diet. He became vegetarian at the age of nine, and turned vegan when he was about twenty, ie twenty years ago. His son, aged six now, has a standard mixed diet however. His wife is intolerant to about everything. At Christmas I had to cook three different Christmas puddings.

Hi Bigbooty, I became vegan because I thought it was a healthier way of eating and also because I never liked cooking meat and still really don’t!

I ate tons of soy though, in the form of tempeh, home made tofu and soy milk. Unfortunately, soy is highly goitrongenic and so was another negative on my health since I developed autoimmune thyroiditis toward the end of my vegan life. Goitrogens of all kinds are considered unhealthy for thyroid patients.

At the end of the 20 years I was also shocked that I had osteopenia even though I was a runner and would have expected my bones to have been more solid from that form of exercise.

My biological dentist says that despite the common view that bone is mostly made of calcium, that it is made of a variety of minerals which are bound to protein and that the bone matrix is actually mostly protein.

Despite all the health negatives that I was confronted with towards the end of those 20 years of being a vegan, I still miss it. I also know that it works really well for some body types and metabolisms.

Hi Lael,

Wow what a shame about your thyroid problems with soy. I love my raw cruciferous veggies. Don’t seem to be having any adverse effects from eating them. Had my thyroid function test earlier this year and everything was fine. What about iodine? Perhaps take a supplement to boost the amount of iodine that you take. Hmmm need to have a look at my test results to see if it included iodine levels.

Wow that’s just crazy.

I make my own hummus and do not add oil to it, the cooking water or plain water if you accidently put all the rest down the drain, as I very unmindfully did this week. I add herbs, parsley mint and coriander leaf this time, but whatever you fancy. Some of that and raw veg, capsicum, carrots, zucchini cabbage, again your choice. Easy, quick, tasty, healthy and filling. Beware commercial hummus, it has oil added usually and is expensive compared to buying beans and soaking them. I add a bit of bicarb to the soak, they cook quicker.

On other days I use a yoghurt, could use a soy one, and a bit of tahini as a salad dressing. A little goes a long way and it tastes great if you like tahini, as I do. Again you can add herbs and or garlic and or lemon or lime juice.

If I have a big serve of veg or salad with this I don’t eat too much other stuff, like falafel.

I am moving from vegetarian to vegan; like many it’s cheese that gets to me and I have been living in Thailand where it is impossible to get vegan cheese.

Hi – The problem is that so many great vegan foods like nuts, tahini, and avocado are full of calories.

Black beans and rice could be a work-around, if measured.

There is humus, which I am sure that you know is a mixture of tahini, lemon juice, and chick-peas. I suppose that one could put only a tad of tahini with the chick-peas to keep down the calories.

Heart of palm has few calories and is filling.

Tofu is only 24 calories per 40 gram slice–at least the brand I use. Oh, there is misso! You could make a broth with garlic, onion, and cilantro. Then add the misso for taste, heart of palm, lemon juice, and various kinds of mushrooms chopped up for chewiness. Mushrooms are low in calories. Grilled without oil increases their tastiness.

I plan to go vegan once I reach the maintenance phase.

P.S. I have now seen the posts on tofu affecting one’s thyroid. I will take care not to eat a constant diet of it.

I was on a strictly Whole Foods Plant Based diet some years back for about a year. (Also for many shorter periods since then.) I was at my desired weight and ate whatever I wanted and never gained weight. I did limit the number of nuts and dates I ate, but not potatoes or other starchy foods. I like most kinds of beans so ate a lot of them in different dishes. It’s almost impossible to not get enough protein on a vegan diet if you eat a variety of foods and don’t starve yourself. If I had been doing 5:2 at the time, I would probably have not gotten enough protein on FD. But I often don’t now either, with meat included because I still eat mostly vegetables. I make it up on NFD.

I never paid attention to quantity and my carb content was very high. The thing is, that the fiber content was high too, so I felt full all the time. The processed foods I ate were mainly condiments. At the time, several friends in the neighborhood were on very low carb diets and while they initially lost weight they never got to were they were thin. They often lectured me on how I should be eating low carb, but there was kind of a disconnect for me since they were all over 180 pounds while I was 130 and stuffing my face with carbs.

I went back to eating animal products because I travel and have meals out with clients and business associates often. It’s possible to do that on a vegan diet, but usually not without a lot of fuss in substituting menu ingredients or choosing restaurants. I will likely go back to a WFPB diet when I retire. We still eat a lot of vegan meals at home.