Anorexia will disrupt your hormones and account for muscle loss.
W
5:2 intermittant fasting will not lead to anorexia.

If you are anorexic you should not be doing 5:2.

5:2 is restricting calories for 2 days per week only. The other 5 days should be normal eating days.

@Alaide. You really dont give enough information in your post. How long have you been “fasting” for up to now? Is it a water fast only? 500cal 800 cal? What is it that you do? How many days do you fast per week? How long have you been doing it for? You say yove lost lean mass and not fat? How have you come to this conclusion? Have you had a DEXA scan? Had a BodPod measurement done? How much have you lost over what time frame?

Describe what you’ve been doing so far. What do you eat on a fast day, on a normal day. Need more information to give you a sensible answer.

Alaide – as far as I know there’s no such thing as giving yourself a ‘clean start’. You just start with 1 fasting day (FD) of 500 calories.

It sounds like you started with too low calories for too many days without drinking enough fluid. When you only have a few calories in a day you need to do 2 other things . When you do a total fast or a partial fast, as 5:2 is 2 days a week, you need to have extra fluid and add a little salt for electrolytes.

1. All foods contain fluid , so you need to add extra fluid, extra to what you would normally drink in a day, the fluid you’re missing by not eating as much.

2. You won’t be getting the salt that is naturally contained in food, so you need to add a small amount when you fast.

You still need to give us more information about what you are eating: 10% protein, 35%fat, 55% carbs tells us a little, but what exact foods are you eating.

Eg what you’re eating could be all food replacement drinks, –
Or
55% could mean excellent plant sources (good for your body), or it could be all sugar(still plant based but bad for your body)

So:
What did you have for breakfast?
What did you have for lunch?
What did you have for dinner?
What did you drink?

Also, what you did in those 5 days was very different to 5:2, so the results from it will not be the same as the results of 5:2.

As I wrote before – 5:2 does not meanstarving yourself to the point where hormone production is damaged. There are many women doing 5:2 with no problem.

Also, were you sedentary for those 5 days?
Were you underweight already at the start of those 5 days?

Do you have an existing eating disorder?

OK, while I’m not an expert on this or a qualified nutritionist/dietion, it is obvious to me that what you’ve left out of your 6 days of low calories is protein, hence the possible muscle loss.

Yes, there is some protein in what you’ve eaten, but not enough. You’ve kept in some starchy carbohydrates – oats, peas, corn, edamame, and some high fat items, almonds, avocados, pine nuts, olive oil. Your calories are nearly all coming from these foods. The oils in these are good ones except for pine nuts which has more saturated fat than the others, but I’m guessing you may not have had a lot.

The other foods – strawberries, courgettes, cauliflower are all very low calorie foods. The carrots are on the low side but more calories than the others. Without looking them up I don’t know about chia, radish, and again I’m guessing chia, as a seed, has more oil content, and radish on the low side of calories.

So, my understanding of what you’ve done is you’ve got the food proportions the wrong way around for low calorie days. The 10% protein is fine on normal eating days, but not on low calorie days those proportions you used – 10%, 35%, 55% won’t work.

You need to keep your protein amount quantity up on low calorie fasting days, and drop the higher calorie carbs ie the oats.

When you fast 5:2 style, say 500 calories for 2 non-consecutive days, your protein componant may look something like this:

Protein sources:
100-120gms lean chicken breast or lean turkey breast (no skin),
eggs, especially the whites which is where the protein is
100-120gms lower calorie fish eg fish that is a white fish with calories 100 or lower than 100 calories per 100grams of fish eg basa, ling, barramundi, hoki, whatever is available in your country.
Vegetarian protein: eg
chickpeas,
lentils,
red, white or black beans,
soybeans
tofu

You also need some calcium to keep your bones strong and you need it in your diet everyday. So, some dairy eg yoghurt, would be excellent. Also green leafy vegetables, not just green non-leafy vegetables.

To summarize: i think what you’ve done is several things –

1. The composition of what you’ve eaten didn’t work well for you.

2. The instrument for testing what your body composition was after the 6 days showed you didn’t eat enough protein which it’s interpreted as loss of muscle mass. Because you had some carbohydrates with a high starch content it’s reporting you didn’t lose fat. I am not familiar with means of testing body fat composition, but given bigbooty’s information, I’m presuming that the method you used reflected what you ate, instead of actually testing your body.

3. You didn’t drink enough every day and got dehydrated somewhat.

4. You needed just a little extra salt on 5 of the days. You don’t need much but you do need a little extra to keep your electrolytes balanced.

5. It would have been better to just start 5:2 in the usual way rather than try to do something else before you started. You are a normal weight so there is no need to do anything extra. Even if you were overweight you wouldn’t need to do anything extra before you started 5:2.

Some final comments :

Your fears about hormone imbalance relates to people who severely undernourish. 5:2 is not in that category.

If you are still breastfeeding your 2yr old, wait till you’re finished before starting 5:2.

If you are vegetarian or vegan you will need to make sure you get adequate protein, calcium, and Vit 12.

Go to the menu in top right hand corner, click on tracker, and you will find in there a way to work out your TDEE – total daily energy expenditure, which you’ll need for your 5 non fasting days. You may need to add a bit more on non fasting days to keep your weight to normal.

There are recipes of various sorts on the forum that will help you.

Read Dr Moseleys 5:2 book, and read simcoeluv’s: Information for newbies – your questions answered, which is on the forum.

* Perhaps someone would put the link to simcoeluv’s Info for newbies up please : sim – if you’re reading, bigbooty, LJoyce ….?

Good on you for wanting to be healthy and wanting to stay healthy. That is a good attitude.

Your 2 year old will have different nutritional needs to you, an adult, so keep this in mind – different proportions of things for a young rapidly growing body, and a rapidly developing brain.

Stay on the forum, and continue to ask questions as you have.

Best wishes to you alaide,
Merry

Hi merry:

https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/