Hi and welcome LittleL:

It is harder for small people to lose (and easier to gain) weight. That is because your TDEE is so low.

#4 in this post will explain: http://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

The post will also explain why if you lose weight faster at the start, you will slow down later, and what your reasonable expectation for weight loss should be on an ongoing basis for any given number of calories eaten.

Good Luck!

Hi LitteL,

I’m 5′ also. It can be done. A few lbs. lost on you will also look like more. I don’t lose fast, but it keeps on happening. I am also a LOACA, with a desk job, so double whammy. Good luck.

Hi LittleL melbournemum said it all. With or without fasting we have to admit that we can’t eat as much as our taller friends. I lost 16lb but adopted 3 fasting days per week calculating that I would save just 3000cals if I ate to my TDEE on the other 4days. I entered “sedentary lifestyle” even though I walk for an hour every day which gave me a TDEE of about 1350.

Now that I am maintaining I have switched to 5:2 giving me 2000cals to play with and treat myself occasionally (mainly at the weekend when socialising). What I have found is that on fast days when I don’t give myself permission to eat i am fine. As soon as permission is granted i get hungry and can’t imagine on feeding days how I manage the fast days. I have come to realise how much hunger is connected with my thinking and attitude. This is the most surprising part of this way of life.

Hi LL there is no falling off the wagon unless you don’t like this WOE and stop altogether.

I find the fasting days OK because I put myself into the frame of mind that this is what I do for the day and tomorrow I can eat again. I need to watch the eating days more especially because I am small and don’t want to undo the 1,000cals I have just saved and eat it the next day. Someone with a TDEE of 2,500 saving 2,000cals on a fastday does not have to be quite as watchful.

There will be easier days and more difficult days and they are not predictable. No rhyme or reason. C’est la vie. But even if you eat a bit more on a fast day (600cals) and a bit more on a Feedday, at the very least you are not putting on more weight.

I honestly think that for small people there is almost no other way of losing weight, tall people could possibly lose weight by just reducing their calories and still have some calories per meal.

Before fasting I watched helplessly as the scales nodged up just a little every year. Whilst I was able to slow the increase I just never managed to lose the weight because I was told I should never go below 1200cals per day or I would go into starvation mode. With a TDEE of 1300 only saving 100cals per day would take me 35 days to lose a pound (that is if I was meticulous with my calorie counting which is almost impossible.) I could live on a permanently restricted my diet.

Now in maintenance I can have some treats without worry and if I put on weight I add an extra fasting day to compensate. I AM IN CONTROL NOW. If I can do it, you can too. This forum will be very supportive and will help you.

Hi Everyone,

I am also 4’11 or maybe 5’depending on which shoes I am wearing. I only started 5:2 3 weeks ago and will be doing my next fast day on Monday.

I agree with everything that has been said and would love to hear more about your journeys.

I appreciate your advice to adjust the fast day calories to your own TDEE although very disappointed at how little it is but I want to succeed so I will work with it.

And congratulation Melbournemum & Lichtle on your weigh lost it’s fantastic.

I am also 5’1″ and have struggled with my weight for years. Litchie – what you said about going into starvation mode if you ate less than 1200 was what I genuinely believed and when I was at slimming world or weight watchers and I needn’t lose weight they always said I was not eating enough!! This 5:2 diet proves that this is a myth. This diet has been the best thing I have ever done, my blood sugar levels were up and I have impaired fasting glycaemia (pre diabetes) and had to lose weight. I don’t always stick to 500 but never go above 600 and have been on holiday etc so sometimes I fast one day and sometimes 2 per week but have lost an average of 3/4 pound per week. I am thrilled with this weight loss because I am socialising at the weekend and still losing. I can see me doing this for the rest of my life, it fits totally into my lifestyle. I have lost about 17lbs (8lb on 5.2 diet) and have another stone to go. Do stick with it, you will see the benefits.

Hi, I’m starting 4:3 and then plan on doing 5:2 for maintenance.

Hi I’m a small lady too at just 5ft. So glad to read you all are calculating your calories on non fast days. I was told I was getting too obsessive by doing that. Having started just a week ago, I find it hard to work out how many cals I’ve had unless I calculate what I’m eating. Having such a low tdee, even a cup of coffee with milk & sugar (which I had to have every morning, but have now cut off), adds significantly to the allowed calories for the day. Glad to join you all 🙂

Thank you @lichtle. May I ask what your menu is for FD and non fast days please? Sometimes I just can’t decide what to have.

Sorry, @graceland only spotted your question just now. I don’t really have menues. On fast days I tend to not eat until I get home after work and then have a home made vegetable soup and maybe a handful of nuts or an egg (poached or scrabled). I tend to make these up in batches on Sundays with whatever needs using up in my fridge.

On non fast days I generally start breakfast at around 11 hrs with a piece of fruit or two which keeps me going until after my lunch time walk (2pm) followed by another bowl of soup(easy to microwave at work). In the evening I just share a normal meal with my husband (he usually cooks). If he does one of his curries which are quite calorific, I tend to be careful and not over eat the yummy sauce.
If I come home from work and food is not ready, I tend to snack on a handful of mixed nuts or another piece of fruit as I think they are very good for us.

I hope I am not too tall for this thread!! I am 164cm and only have 5kgs to lose. I too have a low TDEE but have seen massive results on this plan.

4.5 weeks in and am happy to report a loss of 10cm from my waist, and 5cm from my hips and a weight loss of 2.5kg. As I mentioned in the other threads I have added in 500mg twice a day of pure raspberry ketones to increase my adnopinectrin horomone levels as the weight was not shifting as much as the centimetres. This has helped tremendously and am now seeing the scales go down.

I fast from the night before to the next night, consuming only liquids during the day. I chew gum if I get hunger pangs and this helps. Because I don’t consume much during my fast days I don’t tend to calculate the calories in my main meal as I usually have meat and vegies which falls well into the FD calorie amount.

I have been doing the 4:3 plan for the last 2 weeks.

Thanks for your encouragement Lichtle!

I suffer from chronic pain and am unable to excercise. This is the first time I have found a plan that I can do without adding extra stress to my body. And yes the 5kgs did sneak on over time!!!

Hi Little Ladies,

I’ve only just spotted this thread. At 5’1″ -155 cm – I fit the bill. I’m sure it is harder for us to lose the unwanted pounds or kilos and, from my own experience, dead easy to put them on. I’ve been on 5:2 since Feb 2013 and have lost 14 kilos – just over 2 stone – but it’s been agonisingly slow and included a 5-month-long plateau. A further 7 kilos would be good, but I could live with just 5. Still a fraction over BMI 25 but it’s a weight I feel and look pretty good at.

My working day is at a desk and most days I try to walk for an hour or more but if deadlines loom – I’m a freelance translator and most of my stuff is for publication or broadcast – I might be several days without putting my nose outside the front door. Fortunately our very strange flat is on 4 levels so I do go up and downstairs rather a lot. Also I’m so ham-fisted and clumsy – I think the posh word is dyspraxic – that I’m constantly dropping things or knocking them on to the floor I keep fit by constantly bending to pick them up. 🙂 Dyspraxia also means I’m rubbish at sport and any exercise requiring good co-ordination, which includes swimming, I just stay in one spot and get in everyone’s way, so walking is the only really beneficial exercise.

On and off diets since my teens and grossly overfed as a kid – not junk but good home-cooked food which would have been healthy were it not for the ginormous portions – this is the first time ever the weight has come off, albeit slowly and, best of all, stayed off. I think the fasting is the game changer. It won’t be a problem to stick to this way of eating for life. What we all tend to forget is that 5:2 was designed to deal with a range of medical issues. Weight loss was just a very welcome side effect.

Hiya,
Joining in here as I am 5 foot tall. Currently 9 stone and want to get back to 7 and a half.
I am fed via PEG tube so can easily control my calories, but I have underactive thyroid and am on an antidepressant well known for causing weight gain.

Hi Lichtle,

One reason I posted on this thread, apart from being what less polite family members call a short-arse, was that I knew your name from somewhere. Of course, you are on the Maintenance thread, where I sometimes pop in.

More importantly, you sent a very kind, supportive message after a certain unfortunate incident, which was a totally unexpected repercussion of the original nasty hoo-ha back in August. To this day, I still genuinely don’t know what I did.

One thing I should also confess. Not only am I dyspraxic, I’m also dyscalculic (number dyslexic), in other words rubbish at sums, so calculations might be a bit difficult. But by a bit of googling I find that 180 cm = 5’11” and even I can work out that 20 kilos equals a little over 3 stone. So yes, it’s a good and gratifying way of looking at it.

@hermajtomomi you had done nothing wrong whatsoever. I remember the August incident (nothing to do with you) but the posts a few weeks back involving you were totally out of order and untrue. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people but cyber bullying is no less painful than real bullying. But then there are many lovely people who came out in support and I hope you found some comfort and truth in them.

The best thing to come out was that you are still active here on the forum and were not driven out by a bully. Courage is a wonderful thing.

Thanks Lichtle, I appreciate your helpfulness.

The 500 cals in a 36 hour period answers my question on the other thread. 🙂

I am lucky/unlucky in that I very rarely feel hungry. Two decades on liquid feed most likely has caused this lol.
However I do like to take my small bottle of feed at 6pm , when the family are eating, so I can sort of join them in some way, and then take what I need from my litre bottle overnight.

So to maintain some sort of consistency during my waking hours I plan on trying this:

Day 1: Feed overnight normal calories finishing at 6 am , 6 pm (12 hrs later) small feed
Day 2: 6pm (24 hours later) small feed.
Day 3:Feed overnight normal calories

(Day begins at midnight)

My main goal is not fast or drastic weight loss, but to stop any more weight gain and lose some cm around my girth, but will definitely monitor carefully and adjust as needed.
Thanks again.

Past experience has shown lack of food does not make me weak , so much as dehydration does. Before my PEG I could go a couple of days without eating and not feel hungry or weak, but when I had issues with feed intolerance a couple of years ago, I ended up hospitalized due to sickness and needed IV fluids due to dehydration.

I am on a special hydrolyzed protein feed now and antiemetics, and have been fine since, but if I don’t take water to bring my fluid levels up to the right amount each day I get very tired and dizzy.

Reducing coffee intake ? Now that is a whole lot harder than fasting lol.

I used to drink 6 cups, um okay large mugs, and it was honestly harder to stop drinking it, than it was to stop eating meals. Nowadays I can very carefully sip some espresso to get my coffee shot, but I do miss having an Irish coffee before bed. I also cannot risk any thin fluids in the first few hours of getting up , so my friends had a good laugh this week when I admitted that on a bad morning, when I feel particularly sluggish, I syringe some coffee through my tube ! I daren’t tell my dietitian that one lol.

Talking about sluggish mornings, I am so fed up, pun not intended, of waking up with a full tummy. I wakeup feeling tired and it is a good hour at the least before I lose the over full feeling.

I have also done a bit of research, into fasting and thyroid function and there seems to be some agreement that people with thyroid disorders should try to eat during daylight hours. My endocrinologist told me years ago to make sure I took my meds in the morning, as that was even more important than taking them on an empty stomach, so what I have read today makes sense.

So in for a penny, in for a pound . If I am changing my feed pattern , I may as well change it completely. I have fasted today and will not feed overnight. I am then going to take 6 feeds during the daytime , on non fast days, and complete my fluid intake with water overnight. I may as well trial this and see if I sleep better, wake up with less discomfort and exhaustion, and give my thyroid meds a chance to work more efficiently both by taking on empty stomach and feeding during daylight.

Going to keep a diary to observe any changes.

Being petite, and doing the maths where 1 pound= 3500 cals, it looks like I shouldn’t really expect to lose much more than a pound a week. Slow and steady wins the race I hope.

Hello all small ladies, I have a question that has me perplexed. How do we calculate our ideal weight? I know it’s said we should go by our BMI but I’ve also read that BMI’s aren’t totally accurate. Before I stared this WOE, my BMI was sitting at the top of the healthy range. But I wasn’t happy with my weight. I’m only 5ft and starting weight was 55.1. I gave myself 5 kgs to lose. Five weeks in and I’ve lost 3.3 kgs, currently at 51.8. I’m am very happy with my loss, but now I’m wondering what I should aim for, if my current goal of 50 kgs is too low and when should I go on maintenance?
Can I ask what goals you other small ladies are aiming for? Thanks

Hello Graceland, this is a question for everybody short or tall. My answer will be one of those annoying “everyone os different” answers.

I can only answer how I arrived at my “target weight”. I was a very slim and slight child and teenager with a fine bone structure and never had to watch my weight until my forties. so for me I wanted to be the weight I was in my twenties and thirties, when I didn’t have to watch my weight. I am 5″3 and I used to be 49kg so I aimed for 50kg as my target weight which I reached a couple of months ago. However since maintaining I have reached 49kg and will definitely not go lower since I don’t think I have the same muscle tone I had twenty years ago and would start to look thin.

As Simcoeluv says you have to like what you see in the mirror or what rings true. There is a bmi calculator somewhere on the web that takes bone structure into consideration which is more sensible.