Hi NotSoFat:

Congratulations on your results!

It is interesting what 5:2 causes people to begin thinking about.

5:2 was created as a life extension diet, not a weight loss diet. The current research indicates that to get the potential ‘health benefits’ of intermittent fasting you need severe calorie restriction on your diet days. Research currently says ‘severe’ means about 25% of your TDEE. All of this to say that 5:2 does not deal with the types of food eaten, it deals with the number of calories eaten. And research and observation indicates it works for weight loss regardless of the foods in the diet. In addition, there are many, many people now reporting success with 5:2 over a year or more. It is sustainable.

Therefore, eating ‘normally’ means not eating over your TDEE. You can eat the foods you want to eat. Many people find they change the types of foods they were eating before starting 5:2 after completing a month or two of successful diet days. There is much debate about what a healthy diet is these days as research increasingly documents that the low fat diet is unhealthy. But the answer is strive to eat what you feel is a healthy diet for you, both on your diet and non diet days. That makes 5:2 healthy for you.

Good Luck!

NotSoFatFatPat, I think what you’re doing is sustainable as long as it feels sustainable to you, healthy as long as you’re getting all your nutrients in. Eating ‘normally’ means not exceeding your TDEE, which by definition would cause weight gain. Most of the people we see around us are not eating ‘normally’ by this definition, since most people are overweight and slowly becoming more so. People have different ideas about what constitutes ‘healthy’ eating, and 5:2 can accommodate many of them. Many of us find that, while we can eat whatever we want, we can’t eat as much of some things as we were before and still lose weight.

I think you just need to be prepared to make revisions in your plan without giving up entirely if you eventually find the 1000-calorie days too restrictive. One of the beauties of this way of eating is that you can make it work for you, instead of you having to fit into a bunch of rigid rules. Whenever I’ve gotten a little bit bored or frustrated I bought a new cookbook or a new pot or pan, learned to cook a new dish, switched from 200-calorie breakfasts and 300-calorie dinners to 500-calorie dinners, or something to shake things up a bit. (I think it helped that I didn’t wait until I was severely bored or frustrated before doing something about it.) In this way, plus increasing my walking to an average of 10,000 steps/day, I lost 40 pounds in 40 weeks and am now embarking on the adventure of maintaining my new, slim weight 🙂 So I encourage you to keep doing what feels right for you!

simcoeluv, thank you, I will have to think about this. 375 calories feels like a lot less than 500. In some ways it would be easier not to eat at all except that the evening meal gives some structure to family time with my son, and he can’t fast for medical reasons. I’m sure I’ll get there, this will just take me a bit of time to digest. 500 calories worked fine for weight loss, and I had the impression that Michelle Harvie’s program is about 650 calories on fast days, I’ve been reassuring people about that, now I feel like maybe I’ve told them the wrong thing, if they want to get all the benefits of fasting. It just seems like eating even fewer than 500 calories might make it too hard for some people to even begin.