"Feast" days ?

This topic contains 11 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by annette52 8 years, 1 month ago.

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Maz21

9:11 pm
26 Oct 16
Permalink

Hi! Newbie here 🙂

So,
5 “feast” days when you don’t have to calorie count, nothing’s restricted, nothing’s banned, no major rules, no food groups banned etc
2 “fast” days = 500 calories or less. (But still nothing banned).

Great, I thought! Easy. I can sacrifice those 2 days if I can eat “normally” the other 5. This diet doesn’t require me to go vegan or gluten free or cut out dairy! It doesn’t require me to ban wine or crisps or chocolate! No low fat, low carbs, high protein or juices! The only rule is 500 calories on 2 days.

But now, reading more, it doesn’t sound so easy. Those 5 days are not quite “eat what you want” days. I mean I never expected to eat a box donuts or a couple of tubs of ice cream, and nor would I want to! But I hoped for normal eating with no calorie counting. Buying a sandwich without reading the label, or having a slice of cake with my coffee without worrying. No more shopping only from the diet aisles in the supermarket!

But my TDEE is about 1700. (And I believe that’s what I’d eat for weight maintenance. For weight loss it’d have to be less than 1700 – is that right?)

So really, I do have to calorie count, don’t I? Just that it’s less counting on 5 days and more on 2. (Or more on 5 and less on 2!?!)

Doesn’t sounds so great now:( Am I missing something? Help!

annette52

9:30 pm
26 Oct 16
Permalink

Don’t panic. What attracted me to the 5:2 was the lack of counting calories, points or anything else and I never ever thought that it would work either. I lost weight and inches without ever giving a thought to what I ate on non fast days(NFD).

I did find though, that I felt better with the food that I ate on a fast day(FD) so found myself making better choices on NFD, which was something that I realized over time.

FD food should focus on protein and leaves, no carbs.I always have food that I love as a firm principle for a FD. For me that might be a salmon fillet with vegetables or salad for 1 meal and prawns with salad for another meal. I miss out breakfast on a FD.

You can continue with the wine, crisps and chocolate but you will shrink more slowly than if you reduce your consumption of these. The choice is yours but just remember that this is a way of life and not a diet.

Top tips would be choose food that you love on a FD that is protein and leaves, avoid anything ‘diet’ or ‘low fat’-usually stuffed full of sugar, plan what you are going to eat on a FD and avoid food shopping on those days.

Is that any help?

bigbooty

9:46 pm
26 Oct 16
Permalink

Hi Maz,

There is no magic involved. If you are relying on magic you will be disappointed. You can not eat whatever you want and however much you want, that’s wishful thinking. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said youre hoping for “normal eating”. If you are currently overweight then your perception of “normal” isn’t quite right. It cant be. I don’t count calories but I am mindful of what I eat, so no you don’t have to count calories to be successful. I lost 46 pounds (21 kgs) over the course of one year without counting calories. Would you expect to be able to run a marathon without training for it? So why would you expect to lose weight without changing what you eat and how much you eat?

No foods a banned but that doesn’t mean all food choices are going to be good for you. If your aim is to genuinely lose weight then youre going to have to cut out unhealthy foods. Some unhealthy foods are obvious, some are not!! What to avoid. Sugar should be avoided like the plague. Also avoid simple grain based carbs like bread, pasta, pizza, cakes. Lollies and chocolate. Fizzy drinks, sports drinks. Avoid rice. Fruit juice is NOT healthy!! You want fruit eat a whole piece of fruit. If the packaging says “low fat” run away as fast as you can. Its NOT healthy. Have full fat yogurts with low sugar content. More veggies and some fruit. Go for your berry type fruits. Avoid breakfast cereals like the plague. They are not healthy. Muesli bars are not healthy.

Good luck with it. It works but you have to give it a genuine try.

simcoeluv

10:29 pm
26 Oct 16
Permalink

Hi Maz and welcome:

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

Good Luck!

Merryme

12:56 am
27 Oct 16
Permalink

Hi Maz,

It’s eat what you like, or foods you are familiar with, but not eat as much as you’d like, so no gorging or overeating. As bigbooty says, our perception of what is a normal amount is usually wrong when we start and over time we tend to reduce the portion sizes.

Re your TDEE of 1700. No you don’t have to eat less than that on your 5 nonFDs. Remember on your 2 FDs you are having 500. That’s what does the weight loss. When people don’t lose weight on 5:2 it’s because they eat way too much on their 5other days. Don’t use the term ‘feast’. It’s not feasting, just normal eating. The other very important part of 5:2 is that your body has days of little food and days of more food. Alternating betweens those two things gives us a health benefit. On the FDs our body goes into cell-repair mode.

Re TDEE again. Make sure you have accurately put in the amount of exercise you do on the TDEE calculator, so that the TDEE figure is as accurate as possible. Apart from overestimating portion sizes, the other mistake people often make is overestimating how much exercise they do.

Some people do 5:2 without calorie counting. Others find they need to do it for a short while just to get the hang of what they’re eating.

Read simcoeluv’s link, it’s excellent and will get you off to a good start,

Maz21

11:20 am
27 Oct 16
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Thank you all SO much. Your replies are much appreciated. And all your bits of advice and thoughts are super helpful.

I read lots & lots (including all the newbie advice – thanks simcoeluv) before posting but will continue to read more and hopefully it’ll all become clearer over time.

Annette – that’s all not just helpful but very reassuring too, thanks. I think I did panic a bit hehe!

Thanks BB, I’ve noted all the foods best avoided.
Merryme – this is what I come back to – is it really “eat what you want”? (within moderation) because it seems, just like other diets, there’s a huge list of foods to avoid.

I’m not so worried about FDs – not that they’ll be easy! (btw can you sleep through much of a FD?! Or does that not count!) – but there’s that one rule which doesn’t leave for any uncertainty. As I said, it’s the “feast” days which worried me – I guess I’m so fed up of calorie / fat / carb counting that I was hoping I wouldn’t need to do that anymore. But I’m no longer going to use *that* word and will work on planning and understanding how to work my NFDs! 🙂

annette52

11:49 am
27 Oct 16
Permalink

I don’t count carbs, calories or fat at all. BUT I do eat more fruit, veg, salad, fish, nuts, seeds etc than I did before. The biggest thing that you can do to not only make NFD easier but is also better for you is to cut the amount of sugar that you consume which is both hidden and visible. Try reading the pack of packs for a week with the goal of not exceeding 24g sugar per day, it is pretty enlightening. Excess sugar turns to fat…which is stored on the body somewhere.

Different people have found that avoiding some foods works for them. I am never going to cut out rice/pasta/bread/potatoes completely from my diet, but I do now have the brown/wholemeal versions and opt for smaller portion sized and eat them less often.

There isn’t a banned list so you can choose to eat what you like, but if you want to shrink then you have to make changes to what you eat and how much. There seems little point in having 500 cals on a FD if you then ruin it by consuming far too much on a NFD.

I was baffled when I started at the notion of ‘eating normally’ on a FD. If I had eaten normally then I wouldn’t have been 3 stone overweight. I couldn’t see how I was ever going to achieve that, but as I had more FD I realized that my portion sizes became smaller and I was making better food choices. For me, not having anything banned really helped, no points or calories to count was a lifesaver after becoming food obsessed after Weightwatchers.

Look at what you eat and drink every day, then see if you can make a healthier swap. Lots of small steps add up. If I can give up sugar in my tea after 40 years+ then anything is possible, but planning meals is key.

Maz21

12:04 pm
27 Oct 16
Permalink

Thank you so much Annette – that’s all really helpful. I too did weightwatchers years ago, just for a short time, but it stuck with me in a slightly obsessive way. I want to get away from that.

I can’t cut out carbs, and nor do I want to! I already eat only wholemeal grains so I’ll just continue doing that.

I’m going to take your advice and do some proper planning for the next few days and take it from there! TY 🙂

annette52

5:11 pm
27 Oct 16
Permalink

Glad it was helpful, Maz. Just remember that carbs will not fill you up and protein will. Try scrambled eggs with some smoked salmon without the toast for a meal and you will see what I mean.

Have a look at Aseem Malholtra(the truth about fat and sugar-he is a cardiologist aand talks about what he eats and why, Robert Lustig(Paediatric endocrinoligist and why sugar is making us ill/fat and why we should reduce our sugar consumption and eat unprocessed foods) and Jason Fung(nephrologist-importance of fasting etc). You might find Damon Gameau interesting, he ate an apparently healthy diet for 60 days and what happened, which started my research and discovery of Lustig.

Don’t put anything diet or low fat or jar tomato sauce in your basket, it has so much sugar in it. Information is power.

annette52

11:25 am
29 Oct 16
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Forgot to mention my friend, who has been obese for as long as I have known her(about 30years) who has, over the years tried a variety of diets which have restricted what she ate, how much and made her miserable. You won’t be surprised to hear that when she stopped the diet, she put the weight on as fast as she lost it and more.

In February, she started cutting out bread, pasta, rice and potatoes out of her diet and although there was little change in what the scales said for a while, it was clear that she was shrinking all over. Months passed and she decided to try 2 FD a week in the summer as well. She eats out several times a week, goes on 3/4 holidays a year and has lost over 3.5 stone so far.

She eats fish or meat with salad or vegetables, more eggs than she has ever eaten before in the form of omlettes etc, tuna, roasted vegetables and has now given up breakfast as she has found that she isn’t hungry. She counts nothing, eats what she likes and avoids those 4 foods(she might try some when out but finds more and more that she simply doesn’t want it). She eats fruit, vegetables, eggs, butter, cheese, nuts, meat and fish. She is eating food that she likes, when she wants to and is shrinking, more slowly than any diet but this is a way of life and not diet.

simcoeluv

5:22 pm
29 Oct 16
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Hi Annette:

Your friend is on a diet. It appears she has combined the Atkins diet with 5:2 (although Atkins also recommends you cut out sugar, making it the ‘5 whites’ you hear so often). Her rate of loss is very good – it rivals any other diet out there. About all anyone can reasonably expect to lose on any diet, other than a total fast diet, is around 50 or so pounds a year. She is actually ahead of that pace, but it sounds like she started at a very high weight so she could (did) lose more than average. Her rate of loss will slow down as she gets ever lighter. Let’s hope she does not get disheartened and give up! She is doing so well, and can do so much better if she continues.

annette52

5:31 pm
29 Oct 16
Permalink

She doesn’t regard it as one because there is nothing banned, no calories to count and if she chooses to have pudding as she did every night for a week on her recent cruise, then she does. The difference is that she is making the choices on what she wants to eat and drink and has found that she can eat tasty food every day..and still shrink.It will be interesting to see what happens to her and her food choices over the months to come, but I have never seen her so happy.