Started the fast diet 26th September after holiday with too much beer and food. Before going on holiday I decided to change my eating lifestyle and to increase exercise. I am including extensive exercise which will include 3 spinning and 2 circuit training sessions a week with a 5:2 fasting with a high protein low carb diet for remainder of days, plus a complete alcohol and bread ban. The first week was quite tough and quite tiring but so far it appears to be working. My starting weight after hols was 95kg and this morning it was 90.4kgs. My intention is to keep this approach going until the end of November with a target to get under 80kgs. At the end of October I will have body fat % measured. I am keeping a log of weekly diet and a daily log of how it is going.

Hi;back to light upper body weights this am, yoga for flexibility yesterday; still need to get with the HIIT program. Main stay exercise remains long walks but as the autumn weather deteriorates that may not be a easy. If I can afford, and there is snow, I would like to get back into Nordic Skiing and more ice skating this winter to replace the walking. I know that weight/resistance training is important but have never gotten into the habit, now that there is evidence it helps with cognitive, as well as physical, ability in later life the need seems greater.

How do you know what supplements you need? Have you had a full blood analysis done?

Absolutely. Gym Monday morning, Pilates yesterday, gym again this morning.

I also exercise but not a regular guy. Actually exercise helps to keep the fitness well.

Meghan, those are impressive results. I don’t know if you have a weight target, not all of us do; some just want to be healthier. If you do, serious 5:2 and that commitment to exercise will get you both there.

The lack of breakfast didn’t make any difference, which is as well because I no longer eat it. There is some research which suggests that exercising in a fasting state, if only the overnight fast, burns more fat. Just to confuse things, there is also evidence that we exercise more efficiently in the afternoon. In the past I have found that after two days of water fasting I lacked energy for endurance events, but an hour in the gym was OK. I have been reading recently about HIT and am sufficiently convinced to try it. I shall continue my old style hour long sessions because I quite like them and they work for me, and add HIT on the days I don’t go to the gym. It should be interesting.

I exercise … if what I do is considered “exercise” lol I’m a computer programmer and I spend a lot of time in my office, typing away the sunny days and holidays. I simply jog in place during my breaktimes. I have a timer on my phone and I jog for one minute. It increases my heart rate and speeds up my journey toward my desired fasting result: to improve my appearance.

I used to be a fat woman with oily skin that was full of acne and acne scars. I barely looked like my teenage self. No wonder my classmates from college didn’t recognize me anymore, and no wonder everybody else had already been married except me.

Well, this has improved a bit lately. I researched on the internet for ways to fix my situation. For the acne, I was given a lot of recommendations, but I chose the natural ways. I have switched my diet to nutritious foods and drinks and I have been keeping my things as clean as possible to lessen the causes of my acne. For the scars, I was recommended the new All Purpose Hydroquinone Cream. I have been using the cream for only 2 weeks daily, but my scars are barely visible now. For the fats, I have been fasting using the resources on this website and – of course – exercising.

Fasting and doing an exercise like jogging lessens your fats three times faster than if you were just fasting without any exercise.

I agree with diverdog. When I first started trying to lose fat by exercise, it was very short HIT workouts and I did lose a lot of fat at first. However that really slowed down. Going from 35% bodyfat to 30% was pretty easy with exercise. 30% to 20% was slow. Below 20% it has been much slower and harder. Exercise helps but I think diet is far more powerful for fat loss.

I know could lean out at least temporary by eating much more protein and less carbs, but I’m not convinced it is worth the risks. Body builders do it all the time but they don’t seemed to be that long lived. (Possibly because of other abuses though …)

However I deeply believe in exercise. I don’t help with losing fat but I don’t think it helps a great deal unless you have an extreme amount of fat.

So … after fasting I burn calories at a crazy rate for a day or so. I think part of it comes from metabolism ramping up a little during fasting and the other part from the body having a lot of work to do once the food is available. Today I’m on pace to break 3000 calories. My workout was 140 pushups and 124 floors of stairs. Trust me it is harder than it sounds. As for waking, I’m just over 9km today. Pretty typical for Tokyo. (5 to 10km / day)