t had my annual physical and discussed the 5:2 diet with my doc. She also thinks it’s a great idea (as I’d lost 16 lbs since mid-August – yay!). She said she was going to recommend it for her patients that were struggling with other types of diets. I’m still amazed at how easy it has been. I’m now down 20 lbs.and this has definitely become a lifestyle for me. I’m so excited that it works! So just ignore the naysayers. As my doc said, fasting is good for you! Good luck.

Hey Ashley, I think that when you start losing weight and feeling better people will see that and it might change their mind. Even a doctor can’t say something is unhealthy if it’s making you healthier, right?
I do understand the importance of support though, so you could just hang around here from time to time (or all the time 😉 ) and read through posts for inspiration or ask us for a bit of motivation when you’re having a bad day. It’s all good, we’ve all been there and we all believe in the magic of fasting.

A good way of getting some great motivation is by simply tracking your results somewhere or keeping a journal type thing so we can read along and tell you how awesome your are!

I’m having a fast day Wednesday , we will do it together!

Take tape measurements and weight/ scales tomorrow morning.
Record it somewhere and watch yourself shrink….

Hi Ashley that’s a good result so far, keep going and don’t tell anyone what diet you are on until the pounds start dropping off 🙂
I just say I’m cutting down on the junk food!
Keep posting on here and you will get lots of support 🙂

Ashley, it gets easier once your body learns that there is nothing to panic about!

And there is heaps of evidence that low fat, calorie restricted diets don’t work, and in fact lead to long term weight gain. And that is exactly what you have experienced, is it not?

For a beautifully constructed explanation, (with lots of solid scientific support), of how we get fat, and how we can get healthy, you need to watch Dr Jason Fung’s Youtube videos ‘The Aetilogy of Obesity’. Six ninety minute videos, but by the end you will understand how you got overweight, and how fasting (and a few other changes) will save you from what your family have suffered.

Yeah same.

Bircher Museli or this thing I do with an apple and ‘ base’ and milk, ( not porridge, but warm)
The recipe is on a thread I started saying ‘ welcome to the Monday FASTERS’ or summin.
It’s yum
If it is breakfast out and once in a blue moon, go for it, waffles..and eggs.

( just waffles might spike your insulin, mixed with eggs will calm it a bit)
And enjoy!!!

As mitches says, don’t drink the juice, or water it down and have some protein.
But don’t stress..that’s the beauty of it, cos 2 days a week..you is eating like a finely tuned athlete and the other days, enjoy but don’t bing ( go over board.) food is not leaving the planet.

Protein is anything with a face on or has come from something with a face on ( bar legumes,/ nuts they don’t have a face, thank goodness. They are protein too)

I really connect with this post because I am getting the same responses from people. However, I have to admit… when my husband first talked about this 5:2 plan (I don’t like to call it a diet) I was not totally on board. I met with a fitness trainer and he was concerned too. He told me that he would like to touch base with me in a couple of months to see if it is working. I talked to him about the mice studies related to this plan. He then said I would be his human “lab mouse” because he did admit that if it works, he would like to use it to help others. The thing to remember is that people are skeptical of things they don’t know or understand. Use that cynicism as a motivator.

After 5 weeks, I have lost 7.7 pounds. My husband has lost 9. I can’t wait to go back to that trainer looking slim and trim. 🙂

Nice loss Alaska! And like you said, going back to that trainer looking slim and lean should get him “on your side”. 😉

I just wanted to say that it was Michael Montignac who pointed out in the 1990’s that the concept of calories and weight control was concocted by two doctors from the Mayo Clinic in the 1940’s who performed about two weeks of research. That was it! Ever since then, the concept of “calorie reduction” has been the pancea for the world of the overweight.

Montignac pointed out some very interesting flaws in traditional calorie reduction.

During World War II, thousands of people were (most unfortunately) put into concentration camps and starved. Many people died of starvation, however some of them survived.

But according to the “calorie reduction theory” everyone who would have been put into a concentration camp and received about 200-500 calories per day “must die” after 3 months. But the average concentration camp prisoner continued to live on, in some cases for years.

It’s gruesome, I know, but when you take a look at all the other incidences of famine, the human race would have been doomed if the calorie model were true. The reality was humans are adaptable to more or less calories. You can survive on a number of calories if you have to. However if you live in an environment where food is in abundance, it’s sometimes torture to subject yourself to permanent denial by “never” eating the delicious foods, because you are overweight.

It seems that because the calorie reduction model has “been on the market” for decades, too few medical professionals what to explore new possibilities for changing dieting. They want to continue the calorie reduction model, because that seems to have been the most successful model in the past.

But ask your doctor this: why is it obesity is such a 20th/21st century probelm? Why do more people need to diet more than ever? Could it be that it’s because we no longer live under Stone Age food scarcity problems? Even though our bodies are physiologically still in the Stone Age?

In the end the Fast Diet is calorie reduction. On fast days you eat less calories. On feed days you eat what you eat.

This is new. But it’s up to you to prove to your doctor, it’s a way of life and not a diet. A calorie diet has a start, a period and an end when you reach “X” pounds. This isn’t like that.

This is a way of life, not a diet.

“Just another fad”! Tell me about it, Ashley et al. Couscous, I would be tempted to reward your “ironic” supporter by shoving his cake right down his throat!.

I was only thinking today how mean-spirited some of medical profession are about intermittent fasting. Play around for a few minutes on Google and you’ll see what I mean. It’s as though they think the many who have succeeded in losing weight by this very civilised method are simply being gullible.

Thank you for your excellent post, Weissdorn. I’m reminded of a very distastful story that appeared in one of our local rags a couple of years back about a doctor who told an older Jewish lady patient with a weight problem to stop eating so much, after all “nobody got fat in Auschwitz” – a disgraceful thing to say, especially taking account of the patient’s ethnicity.

The weight reduction from the fast diet is actually due to a reduction in calories – 500 calories instead of 2000 for two days of the week brings about a deficit of 3000 calories for the week – the other health benefits that are acrued seem to come from the fasting effect. Would be fantastic if someone did some scientific statistically relevent studies on humans in relation to this. I don’t think these have occured as yet.

It is a lot easier to reduce calories long term by only having a few days where you are eating less than to be continually, day in day out having to count your calories and to not be able to enjoy the foods that we love that are so calorie dense that on a restricted diet they just can’t be enjoyed.

One thing that I have been loving with the fast diet is that I am a lot more comfortable with the feeling of being hungry. Knowing that not eating for a day isn’t going to kill me.

I tried 5:2 a while back but only did it for 4 fasts over 3 weeks… Oops! I’ve started again this week and am fasting today and on Wednesday. I told my husband and he said he thought fasting wasn’t worth a pinch of s%$t. How’s that for support?? He’s adamant that the only way for me to lose weight is to exercise. Easy for him to say when he is self employed and can structure his day however he wants! We get up at 6am and I leave home at 7.30 for work. I get home at 6pm when I have to do all the house stuff – kids, dinner, washing etc…. time is not my friend.

I don’t care what he thinks though as I am doing it anyway. It is a perverse kind of motivation! Lol!

I’d love to hear how Ashley is getting on…

Hi JamieB – how frustrating that your husband has that attitude. One thing I have learned during 5 months of 5:2-ing is that the majority of people roll their eyes and tell you lots of reasons why they don’t think it is a great idea and why you definitely won’t be successful.

So the proof is really just quietly getting on with it and showing that it does work.

If it helps I have lost 1.5 stone with almost no exercise – mainly because I am unable to do much whilst awaiting hip replacement surgery (now less than a week away). And whilst it has taken 5 months, I had 2 weeks off for holiday in September and about 3 weeks off over Xmas – and the weight I regained in both cases I lost again the first week back on the 5:2.

If you can do any exercise I am sure it would help the speed of loss – but I and many others on this forum are proof that it works without.

And I was also working long hours and travelling during the first few months of doing the 5:2 (I have since been made redundant) and so I adopted a simple fast day routine of having half a tin of beans on 2 slices of toast and a cup of tea twice a week – boring but time efficient!

There are lots of people on this forum who will support and encourage you – I wish you great success! Go and prove your husband wrong!

Let us know how you get on…

Cath x

BTW – I don’t wish to appear to be dissing Michael or Mimi. We (well maybe not all of us but as a society) do seem to need that crutch of a ‘rule book’ and I expect there is value for some in having a properly nutritionally balanced recipe book with set calorie amounts to follow. Especially for those who weren’t eating a balanced diet already, or are looking for optimal health benefits from the lifestyle, or are so close to their target weight that they need all the extra help they can get.

I think their books do fulfill a need and I believe that they genuinely wanted to get the word out further and saw the books as an opportunity to do that and spread the good word further after the documentary’s success. Thank you to both of them – they have brought most of us to this board and for me that is the biggest win and the best tool.

Myself, I’m happy with my standard favourite recipes (I’ve calorie counted them and they were from my mum’s old weight watchers book anyway) and calorie counting any other ingredients or ready made stuff I choose to eat.

Hi Ashley-I have read many of the responses to you and find them so helpful. My friends think I’m nuts and think it’s crazy to fast but I really like the idea that I don’t have to be hyper vigilant about everything that goes in my mouth all the time every day. I am also shedding pounds more successfully than others who have gone back to the old tried and true plans. I did realize after the first fast that eating regularly the next day was hard to figure out because my regular eating involved over eating.

I do treat myself to a nice breakfast the next day but find that I often don’t want lunch. It’s a learning experience. I know if I really indulge it will negate all that great fasting so I try to keep my TDEE in mind but I don’t obsess about it.

The proof is in the pudding-I am losing weight and intend on having blood work done soon

Hi Jamie how are you doing ? I hope your husband hasnt put the kaibosh on your plans. hope you are managing to get some fasts in—Wishing you well