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Welcome largelady59 and congratulations for finding a way to turn your life around. I started my life in pounds and ounces but think in kgs these days. I’ve been practicing 5:2 for over 3 years and lost 23kgs. I’ve been at 60kgs for 28 months, my lowest weight in 30 years. 5 stone is about 31kgs. There are people on this forum who’ve lost significant amounts of weight. Consider it a way of eating for life and enjoy the new, healthy you emerge. Perhaps choose a nice, positive pseudonym! Good luck.
Hi,
I’ve just provided some info to your 3-3-1 post and will try not to repeat myself.
I am no longer morbidly obese, but I used to be. I was morbidly obese for most of my life, including childhood. In 2013 before losing the weight I was 127kg. I got to my goal of 78kg in 2015 (this is still a BMI of 30 for me, but it’s a weight I’m more confident of maintaining than something lower).
I didn’t lose the bulk of my weight on 5:2 as I hadn’t heard of it back in 2013. I did a very strict VLCD (very low calorie diet) which limited my calories to 800 per day, every day, and replaced most food with meal replacements. Not an easy thing to stick to for the 2 years it took to lose 50kg.
I came to 5:2 when I had regained 9kg as I didn’t have the skills to maintain my new weight. I could not contemplate going back to a VLCD ever gain and I’d heard of 5:2 so decided to try it. It took me 3 months to shift 8kg and ages to move the last 1kg.
Intermittent fasting will result in weight loss, providing you don’t overeat on the NFDs. That can be quite a challenge if you have the eating patterns that tend to go with being morbidly obese. I have a binge eating disorder that drove me to overeat on NFDs and it’s taken quite a lot of time to get that behaviour under control (mostly).
I’ve been doing 5:2 for a year. Once my weight returned to where I wanted it I have continued to stick with this way of life because it really helps me keep my weight stable.
Because IF only cuts calories some days, your weight loss will be slower than if you cut calories every day. So you will lose weight with IF, but you need to be realistic with your expectations about how fast the weight loss will be. You need to understand that this isn’t a rapid way of weight loss, so patience is required. However, the big advantage with IF (especially if you do it as 5:2), is that it’s sustainable indefinitely – and I’ve never found another diet that is. It easily fits into life and you don’t feel like you are on a diet forever – that’s important. I found the FDs easy, but the NFDs took a lot of work as the temptation to overeat on NFDs was very strong. It took me quite a while to develop the skills that helped with this. I found an eating window and also mindful eating were both tools that helped. Learning not to eat lots of empty calories just because it’s a NFD takes practice.
I have lost more than 7 stone in the last year. Not sure if I was morbidly obese but I was certainly getting there and had to stop the cycle of gaining more and more weight. I used a combination of a short eating window and alternate day fasting and cut out most non veg carbs. I felt so much better within weeks that it was its own reward and helped me stick to it. I can’t imagine going back to feeling like that. Thin feels much better than carbs taste.
My friend lost 70 lb/5 stone/31 Kg by not eating bread, potatoes, pasta and rice. She started with not eating those and then added in 2 FD a week as well. Breakfast used to be jam and toast and that became an omelette and then she decided that she was too full so now skips breakfast most days as she isn’t hungry. There were weeks when the scales didn’t move and she would be disheartened but it was clear to us all that she was shrinking, her skirts got lower and lower to the ground as her bottom got smaller!
She and I eat meat or fish with either vegetables or salad. Have a look at Jason Fung The Obesity Myth, a real inspiration for regular fasting.
Avoid anything ‘diet’ or ‘low fat’ its full of sugar. Avoid fizzy drinks/soda at all costs and drink water if you think you might be hungry, we are often thirsty.
LL59, the reason I used the VLCD to shift weight quickly was also for surgery, so I understand that motivation. I wanted to have my knee replacement at a specialty orthopaedic hospital. As they don’t have intensive care and cardiac wards etc they won’t operate on high risk patients – which means they won’t operate if your BMI is over 35 – at the time mine was over 50. So if I wanted my choice of surgeon and hospital I had to lose weight.
The forthcoming surgery can be a motivator if you choose to use it that way. I also found that my recovery and the rehab process was much easier at a lighter weight than it would have been without the weight loss.
Have you tried fasting for longer?
Inspired by Fung(on my kindle) when he talks about insulin resistance and the benefits of longer fasts, I was inspired to try 24 hour fasts which felt very scary but I have found that a couple of 24 hour fasts shrinks the waistline. I eat dinner the previous evening, skip breakfast-which is what I usually do on a FD- then skip lunch and keep busy until dinner when I eat fish or meat with either vegetables or salad.
Try it, it works very well for me.
If you only lost 7lb then your body is very good at maintaining the status quo, so fast for longer and see what happens. I am assuming that you have taken a cold hard look at what you are consuming on your non fast day?
Thanks for the link, very informative. It must be very frustrating.
I lost 26lb and 26 inches all over in the first 8 months of 5:2 but it has taken incremental changes over the years to get to where I am today, often inspired by others on this forum to try different things/read authors.
I thought that the notion of giving up pasta/rice/potatoes/bread was complete madness. What would I eat? Having read Lustig and Fung, I started to eat fruit, vegetables, nuts, avocados, cheese, full fat milk and yoghurt, fish and meat.
One of my biggest successes was giving up sugar in my tea after 40+ years, there was a lot of moaning for a couple of weeks and now I don’t give it a second thought. I drink lots of water now and feel better for it too.
Take a few measurements, try some longer fasts and see if you shrink. Good Luck!
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