Day 24 – Ireland 🇮🇪 – FD B2B

18:6

Resolve resolve resolve

@ merryapple lol at the Bolly and raising a glass to Patsy Stone 🍾

Day 24 – South Africa 🇿🇦 – FD

@merryapple – it is an appalling statistic – close to a third of the earth’s population is fat?! And on track to be 50% by 2035. But maybe these new weight loss drugs will make a difference. I don’t think introducing things like sugar taxes will make much difference. Another interesting point was, “only French and Spanish women are less obese today than in 1990” 🤔

@penz – still a whole week of April to go! Just do it ✅ No-one said fasting is easy, & it won’t be any easier next month. I’m NOT in the mood for a FD today. I don’t think I ever am though. But I will suffer the pain of discipline, rather than regret. Just for a few hours. I can still have my small evening meal around 7 pm, then maybe have an early night. And I will anticipate Friday morning PFDS 😇

I’m patting myself on the back for having just finished reading, ‘El Ratoncito de la Moto’ (The Mouse & the Motorcycle) by Beverly Cleary. Supposedly for 7 – 10 year olds. It was tough, & I can’t pretend I understood every word; but I finished it & I could follow the story 🤓

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” ~ Jim Rohn

Pocket List – Day 24 🧶
@merry🍎
@funshipfreddie
@molij
@daffodil2010
@brightonbelle FD800

Day 24 2nd post

I might do the lottery @funshipfreddie 🤞

Day 24 NFD country west Australia
Apologies, apologies, apologies !
When I said I would host April. it looked like such a quiet month. I had all sorts of ideas for posting a few times daily, trying to motivate and inspire people and generally encourage everyone on their 5:2 journey. Well…. !!!
Apart from failing in all departments spectacularly, I have never had so many tests, trips to the city, sick children, unexpected guests, people coming and going – I don’t even really know what day it is !!
Thank you to everyone for keeping on keeping on.
I am happy to host May to try to make up for it, if no-one else is keen ( May is truly looking fairly quiet at this stage !!)
Easter Feaster meant no FFDs since last Thursday , a few CDs and mostly NFDs with food at odd times and some odd choices…
@Funship0freddie and @brightonbelle, yes I think you re supposed to have god luck when posting simultaneously.
@brightonbelle, I like your attitude in giving this last week your best shot. That is my aim too.
@daffodil2010, resolve is what gets us there ! And again Jim Rohn’s quote is so pertinent to many things But especially this WOL.

@funshipfreddie I admire your perseverance reading your book – well done. And I love the quote by Jim Rohn. He has several I have quoted at different times.

Day 25 – Ireland 🇮🇪 -NFD

Happy to report official weigh in is 0.5lb lower than last week….teeny loss BUT that is taking into account the Easter Feastival, trip away and birthday party…so not bad to lose all the Easter weight. Total loss then for April 5lb. ☘

Planning to see more loss by this day next week.

Ohhhh @stitchincarol, how exciting to be closing today 😄

Have a great Friday.

Day 25 UK NFD

So pleased for you and your imminent move @stitchincarol

Well done @daffodil2010 – I seem to be on one of those pesky plateau, just hoping I can stay on course

Thanks for volunteering for May @funshipfreddie

Right must get going busy day ☀️

Day 26 country west Australia NFD wt ????
With the busyness of the past 2 weeks I have kept well and truly clear of the scales because I know Cruella will be…. well… cruel.
So, we have a mouse!! I hate mice with a passion and I think it must have come in when some of our visitors didn’t close outside doors. Honestly, I think some of them really were born in tents.
I am ‘religious’ in shutting doors because we live on a farm – and I HATE mice !!
Long story short, that meant moving the fruit bowl from the kitchen bench to the safe ( lovely big shelved cupboard with fine flywire doors which allows food to breathe but keeps everything out) in the pantry. Led to clearing out and cleaning the safe first. fruit in safe, cleaned bench then decided to re-arrange other items on kitchen bench.
Took some of my 150 ( that’s only the ones on the bench!!) cookbooks and magazines away and placed some pot plants in the corner previously filled with said cookbooks.
It looks so much better and cleaner but now – where to house the rest of my cookbook collection??
And while I’m on a roll, do I fish out the rest of my cookbooks and have them all in one place?
I have thought about re-arranging one of the small book shelves but then what to do with the books already in there?
DH just called in and asked if I was ‘ procrastibaking’? so perhaps I’ll stop there…
Anyway, I needed a good cup of tea and a rest, so I sat down for half an hour and caught up on all the posts.🥵🥵
@northgeorgia, it sounds as if you are heading in the right direction. Journaling food habits can be eye-opening . The science shows that we do tend to overestimate our exercise and underestimate the calories we consume .
And as I write this there is a programme which ha just come on the radio about diet, our brain and what happens when we eat and being overweight!!😲
I think there are many reasons we overeat. Abundance of food. Availability of cheap processed food ( it is all just processed chemicals when you look at the labels), additives, lack of discipline.
I did not EVER see my parents eat or drink in the street or in the car yet we all do it thee days.
( Protein seems to be the biggie from what I am hearing on the radio, but also the joy of eating….🤔; chemical reactions etc. Stress and Cortisol are also the baddies as it causes many people to overeat but they don’t know why
??genetics?? play a role?
Oh, now he is saying eating is a behaviour and a choice!
@merryapple, Sorry I missed your birthday, belated best wishes.Glad you enjoyed it. How is the dyed wool ? The recipes you talk about sound delicious !! Too tempting!😊
@daffodil2010, congratulations on your 5 lbs loss. Well done !😇
@penz the Easter food your family brought sounds delicioous. I lurve biscotti. 😍
@funshipfreddie, the mosaic cross made by the ladies is beautiful. I am so glad Canopy-gate seems to be over. And you the trendsetter now!👏 I do plan to read the article about countries and levels o obesity. In Australia 60% of adults are overweight.
Just heard that more people in the world are now dying from overprovision than underprovision and starvation. 😲
@excelsior12309 congratulations on the slower lower number.
@ccco, good to hear that you are still hanging around. 😊
@iona72, I hope your daughter is still improving. Also the your granddaughter is getting over the chickenpox.🙏
We have an outbreak of measles in southwest WA which is not good and partly driven by parents not getting their children vaccinated.😱
Plateaus are the pits – and the reason I put back all the weight I’d previously lost on 5:2 way back in 2017. Then Bad food choices and overeating…..
My bad!! ( sorry @funshipfreddie , I just did that to stir you).
@jaifaim, I am with you and resolve to knuckle down this next week.😀
@stitchincarol,I had to pick myself up off the floor ( figuratively!) 😱😲😲 when I read you had never had a hot cross bun!! My DH will to have a HCB until Good Friday but then has no problem eating them for the next week or so. He just had one for morning tea this morning.
Re property : We do a walk through a property but also have an independent property report .
It has just cost us $200 to have a unit we are renting looked over by the property manager with attendant photographic proof. They will repeat it at the end of the rental lease.
The end of the weight/appetite/food radio programme has just ended with the man( missed his name) dying that science shows that out of the non-communicable diseases in the world today are food related and mainly caused by overeating.
He said it is more important to consider health not weight when considering food choices.
Interestingly, when I began this WOL I 2017 I was more interested in health with WL as a secondary consideration.
Well that’s about it for now !!
Have a good weekend everyone. And good luck as you make those good food choices…..😇😇

Day26 UK NFD

Whoops must slow down on my post reading @funshipfreddie

I need a lie down after reading that mammoth post @lilymartin I do hope you get the mouse situation sorted and I feel you’ve more than caught up posts for this month

Have a great Saturday all ☀️

Day 26 – USA/GA – NFD

Weigh-in: 239 lbs. May make tomorrow a FD since Monday is looking very weird now.

Day 26 – Rural Nebraska, USA – CD

Yesterday was totally fun. Fun, and joyous, and hard work…and did I say fun?? We grabbed stuff to move that we’ll never miss over the next month (my floor-length and winter dresses, some plastic bins from our storage closet in the basement, random bags from my sewing room floor of projects needing to be finished, etc.) and got my car and DH’s little truck loaded up, then drove down and signed our names something like 40 times ⁉️ then took the keys and drove to the house, opened the garage and drove in. That was perhaps the highlight for me, LOL, as we’ve never had an attached garage in our 36 years of marriage. We carried everything in…and down. Most of what we took went to the basement, and our basement has standard 9′ ceilings rather than the 7′ of most basements, which means an extra two feet of stairs to go up and down. DH and I were laughing about a built-in stair machine for in the winter months! Then we worked in the yard, me weeding and DH mowing, and the boys stopped by, and the plumber came to fix the toilet (a 30-minute job was all), and then we walked three short blocks to the “downtown” area and had supper at a restaurant we love. Fun, fun, fun, and we just want to move completely and immediately, LOL! We’ll pack a bit over the coming four weeks and take stuff down once or twice a week, but the big effort won’t happen until the final retirement date, Mark’s last Sunday, May 18.

Reading all your comments about why we’re so overweight, and why we eat stuff we shouldn’t, etc., etc…When we got home last night, I was very sleepy and tired (had only slept about 3 hours the night before from the excitement and then worked hard all day), but was craving “something.” DH sat beside me with the bag of already-shelled and salt- and pepper-seasoned pistachios, and it was all over. I ate WAY too many of those babies. And I ate them because I kept craving more. This morning, it occurred to me that, perhaps, if I’d remembered the perfectly balanced combo of sugar/salt the makers put in, perhaps I could have broken the lure of the cravings. And there I think is half the problem: we aren’t raised to THINK about what we’re eating, but are instead asked what we WANT. So feelings rather than thoughts. Thus today has to be so very controlled so that I don’t undo the good work of this last week, and also so that I can undo the bloated belly I now have so my dress for tomorrow’s recital by my students looks okay on me. And also so that I can drop five pounds by May 18, so I can wear a particular dress that day that I always think of as a “frock.” 🥰🥰🥰 It’s a summer dress for sure (so I’m hoping the weather cooperates that day!) and needs me to be just a bit thinner to fit comfortably.

So there are my goals. Oh, and as I think about sorting through my own cookbooks, I’m thinking of you, @lilymartin, and your challenges with books and sufficient space. (and good luck with catching the mouse!) It is so very difficult to get rid of loved cookbooks, isn’t it? I’m certain I haven’t cooked out of perhaps as many as 80% of mine, but I’ve read many of them, I love the look of them, and some of them that I really don’t want for cooking, I keep because it was so sweet of the person who gave it to me. So, I struggle right along with you, LOL!

Okay, I’m off to clean out a cupboard of candles, china, and piano music in roughly equal parts…I love candles!

Have a grand one, everyone!

Day 27 – South Africa – Freedom Day 🇿🇦 – FD

@stitchincarol – so exciting! 🏡 I’d never had ANY type of garage until I bought my current place, just parking bays. Enjoy being able to make the move at a leisurely pace; May 18th will be here before you know it!

@excelsior12309 – I laughed at the grotesque Christmas Tree story. Those poor shrews, cats can be so mean! I feel quite fond of mice after reading ‘The Mouse & the Motorbike’ 😅

Another gloriously sunny autumn day here. And another FD for me, drat! Probably on Tuesday too, I’ve been bad this month 😳

Happy S🌞nday!

Pocket List – Day 27 🍋
@funshipfreddie

Day 27 – USA/GA – ZBC/NFD

Weigh-in: 239 lbs. My mom wants to make some homemade chicken salad today, and I need to cook up some onions since the Vidalias are marking their way into the grocery stores here. But I’m going to make it a light meal day. I plan to make tomorrow a FD 🙂

Day 28 UK f800

Looking like this month will be more like a maintenance month , which would be fine if I didn’t have the extra 10lbs I’m carrying , oh well I always have next month to try again

Pocket List – Day 28 🍏
@at FD800
@merry🍎
@molij
@anicecupoftea
@northgeorgia
@brightonbelle

Day 28 – USA/GA – FD

Weigh-in: 242 lbs. It hasn’t been a good April for me either. I have to figure out why NFDs on Fridays and Saturdays don’t seem to affect me much, but Sundays do. What am I doing on Sundays that is ruining my week?

I’m just curious — are there other people were 5:2 worked great the first few years, and then it just stopped? Not blaming the method; I’m just wondering what happens where on the front end, the concept is not to worry about calorie counting on NFDs or even types of foods, but then we need to be concerned about TDEE as we lose weight, which is basically calorie counting. I’m 10 lbs heavier over this time last year. I could do that without 5:2, so I’m obviously going wrong somewhere.

Pocket List – Day 28 🍏
@at FD800
@merry🍎
@molij
@anicecupoftea
@northgeorgia
@brightonbelle

Day 28

I’m on my phone and this is a packing-up-and-moving-stuff day, so it’s a short post. I’m at 155.2, so not terrible damage from the weekend.

Have a grand one, everyone!

Day 29 country west Australia 83.9 kgs!! FD
Well, it seems like April was amazing and awesome for many of us – but perhaps for the wrong reasons !!!😱
I think it will be Mindful May or Most – Resolved May, maybe ??
@northgeorgia, I lived a 5:2 WOL in 2017/2018 and had better health and lost weight. I hit a plateau for MONTHS where nothing seemed to work, fell off the 5:2 wagon ……. fast forward several years and here I am back again with MORE weight to lose and it is entirely my own fault.
With 5:2, the NFDs are by FAR the most important days. FDs sort of take care of themselves.
If you try/resolve to stick to 500-800 calories and if you do look at the calorific content of food and drinks ,you cannot consume a lot!
I LOVE large flat white coffee and used to drink 2-4 a day at times. Reality check – a large flat white coffee with full cream milk is 281 calories!!😲😲 2 coffees and I was already over my FD limit.
I do still have flat whites but only a SMALL one and with skim milk which is somewhat better with less calories, though still about 200 calories.
Calories are pesky little critters and pop up in the most unexpected places and in seriously larger amounts than we think!! I suggest you work out your TDEE according to your lifestyle – active, somewhat active, sedentary and try to stick with 800 calories on FDs and stick to your TDEE on NFDs for a ew weeks and just see how you go.

BUT on NFDs it is VITAL to stick to your TDEE ( which is calorie restriction, yes). Too may people, myself included, self-sabotage by not eating to their TDEE on the NFDs.
The late Dr Moseley was quite clear that unless you take care with what you consume on the NFDs then you will not lose weight.
But unfortunately many people eat unrestricted amounts on their NFDs and then wonder why weight loss is not happening. That was me some years ago !
Before starting 5:2 I thought I ate resonably healthily , which I did, but just too much!
I had never counted calories in my life until I had to work out my TDEE.
I joined MyFitnessPal and started to plug the numbers and I got a shock !!
I was eating WAY WAY over my TDEE and I had NO idea.
I hated doing the numbers but I did for some months. Portion sizes were controlled, I planned what I ate and hey presto ! lost weight.
As Tom Venuto of Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle fame says – you can’t outrun a bad diet.😬
@merryapple, yes I love my cookbooks and cooking ,far too much . Am currently cooking out of Otto Lenghi’s’s ‘Simple’ – beautiful meals; and also Julie Goodwin’s ‘Classic’. Made a delicious chicken dish yesterday with a lovely sauce and DH will have leftovers today while I will have some green beans ….
@stitchincarol so happy for you to FINALLY have your own home. Enjoy!!🌲Here is a virtual tree to plant as a housewarming gift .😊
@ccco, @funshipfreddie et al, that is the good thing about this WOL, you can take a break as needed.
It certainly is a WOL which requires a bit of discipline ( not my forte) and routine. I have a friend who doesn’t need to think about her FDs any more. She just fasts every Sunday and Thursday with few exceptions – far more disciplined than me !! 🙄
@iona72 and @brightonbelle, I’m with you both, ladies! Getting my May mojo revved up for a somewhat better month than April…. but still, life happens…
On the mouses/mice front, current situation is Lily 1, mouse 1. I got rid of the first rodent, but it appears he brought some of his little friends inside with him……😲
If AT is happy to put up the spreadsheet, I am more than happy to be chief cat herder in May, although this thread really virtually runs itself. 😀
And is anyone is lurking, we welcome everyone and anyone to join us on the journey.
Have a good day all.

Day 29-No. VA USA-FD
Memo to self: more self-control, less self-indulgence! Re-set mind for May!

Day 29 – South Africa 🇿🇦 – FD

Pocket List – Day 29 🌊
@lilymartin
@excelsior12309
@brightonbelle FD800
@funshipfreddie

Day 29 – Rural Nebraska, USA – WFD

I shook my head in astonishment to see how much I’d managed to store on the shelves in my current sewing room; it all covered every bit of the living room floor when finally all pulled out. It all fit into my car, but the shelving unit in the closet in the new house was not what I remembered (just a rod and a shelf, not floor-to-ceiling shelving like all the rest of the closets in the house), so now I’m rethinking how to store it all away again. But at least it’s down there, and most of the rest of the sewing room will be far easier to move. It’s getting harder and harder to leave each time we’re down there, and I’m so impatient to get actual furniture down there. But, as my mom used to say, “Don’t wish your life away!”

Your comment yesterday about Tom Venuto of Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle fame, @lilymartin, made me hunt up the book, and I was able to borrow it from our (new!) library for free. I didn’t get very far, but @northgeorgia and all, it struck me that we used to talk LOTS about various books that were full of solid information and golden inspiration. Is that part of what we’re missing, along with the importance of TDEE, that we’re not making the progress we’ve made in the past? I don’t have much reading time right now, but I always read to fall asleep, so am going to continue reading the Tom Venuto book. Who else thinks reading Venuto or Fung or any of the others would be helpful?

Have a grand one, everyone!

Pocket List – Day 29 🌊
@lilymartin
@excelsior12309
@brightonbelle FD800
@funshipfreddie
@at FD800
@stitchincarol WFD

Day 29 – Ireland –FD 🚫 ✅ 🚶🏽‍♀️ 🌾
157.5lbs
Hello all!
I am with those desperately hanging on this month. It has been a tough one for me and I had hoped to get back to good habits ahead of my holiday in May (next week… eek).
Definitely the least toned I’ve been in a good few years but…. Still not looking too bad for mid-50s and with life being a little tough this year, I am going easy on myself.
I’ll catch up on what I can tomorrow and see what the news is from you all and of course will submit the Astro April weigh in.

Onward and downward ⬇️

We rise by lifting others 💕

Day 30 UK f800

Definitely a yo- yoing month on the weight front and I finish where I started but I like your style @jaifaim . I’ve a lot going on at the moment so I’m taking it in my stride and I’ll look to improve next month

Hope to be able to sign in tomorrow @lilymartin but I’ll be on trains from 7am – off to visit our aging parents so see how it goes . See you all in May

Pocket List – Day 30 🥑
@molij
@anicecupoftea
@at FD800
@brightonbelle

Day 30 NE England IF18:6

Ending the month up a few pounds, but it has made me sit up and pay attention! Still a fair bit of Easter chocolate in our house but I’m doing okay resisting!
Looking forward to a new month, do we have a title yet @lilymartin? Motivated May perhaps!