Hi neil:

I do not calorie count or weigh food on diet or non diet days. I feel the only time you need to do that is if you don’t lose weight. Then you have to figure out why, and the answer always is you are eating too much. Then calorie counting will start to teach you about the calories in what you are eating, which includes portion size.

Good Luck!

Hi Neil.

The 5:2 approach is a very effective way to lose weight but it is slow, around 1lb per week, so a lot of people change it by either fasting for an extra day or eating less than their TDEE every day, or a combination of both in order to speed up weight loss.
I always calorie count on fast days.
When I first started I did really well for a few weeks and then stopped losing weight, I realised it was because my concept of eating normally was what put on the weight in the first place so I weighed and calorie counted every day for a few weeks to get me into good habits. On non fast days unless I am eating out I try to keep to something midway between my BMR and TDEE, but I do a rough calculation rather than weighing everything.

I log my calories on Fatsecret on FDs. Every couple of months I log everything for a whole week. It resets my knowledge of how many calories I eat and it keeps me in check. Makes me feel like I know what I’m doing and I’m not sabotaging my hard work. My intake does seem to creep up slowly otherwise.

neil:

If you read the TDEE post you can figure it out. Just take your TDEE, subtract 600, multiply by 2 and divide by 3500.

Good Luck!