Hi Tanja,

MV is asking for help and your reply leads her to some herbal wonder tea. Really? You lost 9kg in a week. Really? That’s 1.3kg per day. 9cal per gram in fat. So by drinking this tea youre burning 11700 calories per day. That’s Michael Phelps the Olympic swimmer territory. I suppose if you swam 80km per week it might be possible.

I’m surprised to hear you link the fasting to your stress symptoms – as fasting_me suggested – it could simply be a coincidence. Were you feeling anxious about starting 5:2? Did it or does it seem like a big commitment and were you worried about that perhaps – the immediate problem with deciding to undertake something that requires effort over a along time is fear about failing but I’ve found the whole 5:2 experience very accommodating – the weight loss process seems to keep going in the right direction overall if you just stick at it and not worry about the times when you either loose no weight, or put some on or have a patch of not feeling motivated etc – if you just keep returning to doing 2 fasting days, as best you can, regardless of anything and everything else that’s going on in your life – the scales will reward you for your resilience and perseverance. What has happened – and this phrase only just came to me to sum up how I feel now – is that I don’t feel as though I’m swimming against the tide so I don’t feel I’m fasting when I really want to eat – I’m on the edge of going into the maintenance phase and I am just keeping an eye on my weight and regulating my fasting days to be either relaxed (in terms of how many calories I consume) or hard if I think my weight is going up too quickly or by too much. I feel I have learned a way to control my weight – as though I have a tool I can use when I need to and the reason I now feel I’m not swimming against the tide is that my eating habits, the way I deal with hunger and the way I think about eating – the what, when and why of eating – have all changed somewhat so I am naturally eating the right things and the right amounts and a better variety of foods – more fish, veg and fruit – far less carbohydrates (i.e. mainly less bread). As for the link between fasting and stress – I’d say my experience was the opposite – I did suffer from IBS while working in a stressful job but since I quit at the end of 2009 I’ve had barely any incidences of IBS – stomach gripes, constipation, etc. The few time I’ve had it since were, I think, due to one of 2 things 1) having major building work done on my house and 2) a couple of times when I started to reflect on my life and that I hadn’t achieved enough or wasn’t doing enough with my life – times when I didn’t actually think I was stressed – I wasn’t working too much, wasn’t stressed because of worries at work – e.g. friction with co-workers or management, or worried about money, or feeling unloved, unappreciated or mistreated – I was perhaps, for a moment, in a quandary about what my life was about or should be about – perhaps life was a little boring leaving me time to reflect more – I think I’m happier to have a little stress in my life – it is more energising to have things you feel you need or want to get on with when you wake up every day – I started gardening and have an allotment and as a consequence I always have things on my mind that need doing, should have been done or that I want to do. 5:2 was surprising to me because I found it something of a challenge to fast but it’s not like climbing Everest or running a marathon but I unexpectedly found it very rewarding to be able to do something as simple as fast – to succeed at it – just for a day and it felt good the next day to have done it – that good feeling has been a big part in keeping me going so, if anything, 5:2 has added a little stress – a healthy and motivating stress to my life and it’s energised me and given me a sense of achievement so that is how I look at it. If you already have it in your mind that 5:2 is a stress that is causing IBS symptoms I imagine it will be hard to disconnect the two but you did the right thing stopping… and then trying again – that is smart and I think you can still do 5:2 when listening to your body in this way – I hope you will find what I have found – that 5:2 is quite do-able – it’s not easy-peasy and that you can feel quite good about the whole process and the longer you do it, the more you change – your thinking, attitudes, sense of taste, choices of what to eat, how much and when, etc. and the easier it becomes. Stick at it. Relax about it. You made a life choice – just persevere and have faith that it will work whatever ups and downs you are experiencing with it or in your life. there is a dropbox link in my profile of a screengrab of my wight loss graph – you can see the ups and down – and I can explain some of them – you just have to look at the big picture – not those days when I went up by 1kg or more or has 2 days with my weight going up – the overall picture is my weight has gone down… and I beleive I can keep it where I want it. Good luck. Relax and stay positive about it.