The requirements for a fast day a simple. 500 calories for a woman and 600 for a man.

What you drink must be counted in the total calories consumed for the day. So, you can drink whatever you want. If the drink has any calories, it must be added to the food consumed.

I think lots of water and coffee flavored with almond milk.

Lavender:

You can eat what you want as long as you stay within the 500 cal. limit for diet days. Most foods have calories, and with 5:2 every calorie counts, regardless of the food it comes from.

Good Luck!

Hi Rocky:

Your comment brings up several good points. In no particular order:

First, 5:2 is entirely calorie based. Its foundation is a severe calorie restriction twice a week. It has nothing to do with how long a person goes between meals or what foods they eat. The program that ‘started it all’ was not about weight loss, it was a review of the science concerning caloric restriction and longevity. People have happily overlaid on 5:2 their beliefs on the right foods to eat – even when food should be eaten – and made it seem as complicated as can be. But 5:2 is simple – you can eat anything you want whenever you want as long as you severely restrict your caloric intake twice a week. (Note as an aside Varady’s findings that it made no difference what food was eaten – ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – the weight loss and blood results were the same.)

Second, your comment highlights the importance of food in our social lives. As overweight people, we are used to eating a lot of food. Our ‘normal’ eating patterns have caused us to gain weight and get fat. Over time, 5:2 has the sad impact of teaching us just how little food we need to maintain a given weight when compared to what we have been used to eating. We find that going to the pub with friends, having dinner and a couple of pints, can easily put us over our TDEE in just one sitting. To lose weight, it becomes necessary to realize we have to eat less than we were eating, and that is hard. It is interesting to watch all of the efforts to lose weight without eating less – by eating foods that increase metabolism, or decrease inflammation, or by only eating between noon and 8 pm, or whatever. If any of those really worked, no one would be fat. (But writing about them does sell books.) The only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories, and the only way to keep the lost weight off is to not eat too many calories.

Finally, you are right on in suggesting that if a person is not eating all the time, what should they do differently to fill up their time? Obviously that will be different for everyone, but for those of us that have historically spent a lot of time with friends, co-workers and clients in restaurants and bars, or entertaining at home, losing weight and maintaining a new, much lower weight, requires a rethinking of how we spend our time. Eating (too much) becomes a nuisance because we finally understand that it is not good for us and can undo what a lot of hard work and suffering accomplished.

I wish losing weight and keeping it off was easy.

Oh well.

I am also new here, I usually drink 8-10 glasses of water every day but sometimes I make infused water with fruits. I like drinking lemonade too. I used to make lemon with mint or orange with chia seed. Is this good for fast diet? Thanks!