Hi there,
I live in Melbourne, Australia.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about us?
Most Liveable city in the world.
Amazing food, night life and restaurants.

I’m starting the 5:2 diet, but I’m wanting to do 4:3 instead.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday are feast days for me.
I go out on those three days. Eating and partying.
So this will be a challenge for me.
I don’t really like driving water.
I drink lots of herbal teas.
I found Miso soups are the best.
I have one with spinach and mushroom. Only 39 calories.
I love squashed banana with honey as well.

There are sites on line with fast day food options.

Hello Hermaj, Oh I’m terrible not posting so much. Sorry. Are you on the Fleecebook? I’m more often on there, well 95% of my internet time because I admin a group.

Fantastic about your MA. So impressed. It will certainly be a good result – but the wait is always a pain! I was hearing about something call Khan Academy. It’s a site with good quality courses. I was fantasizing about starting maths again – O level!

Yep it’s autumn here now. The seasons are in the wrong order! Should be spring, autumn, summer, winter to ring the changes – wouldn’t work planet-wise I suppose 🙂

Take care Hermaj, great to hear from you. xx

“Ultrasound and MRI studies have shown, however, that if you take the chicken and vegetables and blend them with the water then the stomach will stay fuller for longer, staving off hunger pangs.”
I am not sure I agree with this, even if it’s a scientific fact…
If -as we should – we chewed our food properly it would be pretty well blended by the time it reaches our stomach – would be interesting to know if the volunteers quoted in the article had chewed their food properly.
Apart from being the first too often forgotten step in the digestive process, chewing well slows down eating – leading to feeling full long before having finished a plate of chicken and veg.

Today is my first fast day – wish me luck and detemination. I did get started on this a while ago but lost the plot. I really want to get a grip again becuase I felt so great when following the plan and I found I was stressing far less about food and what to eat each day.

Well done Mimibelle. But you really drink a lot of water. It helps flush the contents of the fat you are losing and keeps your kidneys healthy. It’s easy to not drink and eat at all but do drink lots of water. Good luck.

Hey Nicky! 🙂
Good to catch each other. I’m not been on so much- due to other online things!
That’s excellent loss. Steady is always good.
I’ve had a bit of a dip and put on all of what I lost last year. 🙁 Even 5:2 is not immune from a bit of yo-yoing when the mood gets us.
But I’m at it again, though not the 100% fasting as I did last year. For me bread is the real baddie on non-fast days. Love bread but hopeless and bloated when I eat it!
Keep on keeping on! xx

I am about to start the 5:2, I am 64 years of age and want to be 10kgs lighter to have more energy and not be so tired. Fingers crossed I can hang in there. It’s been good to read all the comments which adds to the incentive to do it.

Just started the 5:2 with my first fast day yesterday. I have always drunk 2L+ water a day and coped really well with my first fast except didn’t sleep well and woke super early needing to use the loo. I am excited to keep going and looking forward to hopefully seeing good results as I have struggled with losing weight and keeping it off for years and I am hoping this is something I can maintain as a permanent solution to that.

I feel performing high-impact aerobics is the best way to burn subcutaneous fat. Brisk walking, jogging, swimming, dancing and skating are aerobic exercises that will eliminate excess fat from your stomach area.

Hi Success – how is the diet going. Just started mine and wondered if you are coping ok with yours

Hi everyone, starting my diet this week, not using set days each week for fasting, going to fit them round my plans each week. Thinking this time of year is a good time to start as I love soups and can make some really low calorie soups for the fast days. Measurements done, weighing before bed tonight the will wait 3 weeks before any more measuring. Really excited to see if it works. 🙂

I started a week ago and have lost 3lbs already so very happy. Early days I know but the fast days were ok. I did an ironing to keep busy. I do notice that I feel quite elated. Is that normal ?

Hi Speedy,

I’m not posting much these days for a variety of reasons, but I thought you would like to know that I finally got my MA result. Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit: I’ve passed! 🙂 My dissertation got me a Merit and, if my sums are right, I will have done enough to get an overall Merit when the full results are formally published in the next week or two. Hope you are well and keeping warm. I know that Holland can be very, very cold at this time of year.

Nicky, thank you also for your good wishes on the jojo thread. As you must have found wih your doctorate, the worry and the exhaustion were worth it in the end. And of course, a lot of it proved to be great fun.

Hi Speedy,

There are three levels of pass for the MA – and probably other post-grad degrees: Pass, Merit, Distinction. So I guess it would be something like cum laude.

No more studying BUT as I may have mentioned before, one of our MA assignments was an independent research project. Mine was all about the Glasgow Tenement House, a flat in a tenement (which just means a residential block, not necessarily a squalid run-down one) which is now a museum. It was home to one woman for 54 years. She never threw anything away so it’s an absolute goldmine for social historians.

It was enormous fun to research, I got a lot of help from various people from the National Trust for Scotland which now owns the place, and there emerged some wonderful human interest stories. From very early on my lovely supervisor encouraged me to think about reworking my project report into a book for a general readership. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll set the wheels in motion in the new year and start serious work on it in the spring or early summer.

Ok so I have just watched a story on this tonight. I had heard about the diet before but hadn’t really looked into it a great deal – It all sounded too hard. After watching the interview tonight and seeing the effect it had on ones health it has really inspired me to start. I am a working mother of two with a FIFO husband so life is challenging – really looking forward to seeing what this diet can do for my body (and mind!). My mother, father and sister are also keen to try. Day 1 starts tomorrow 🙂

If you don’t drink enough water you become dehydrated. And your body will retain fluid as a consequence, causing weight gain and bloating.

hi folks
started my diet on the 15th. the fist week weigh-in, i’m down 2.4 pounds.
pretty for a compulsive over eater!
i’m a water drinker, so that’s not a problem.

it’s a mind over matter thing for sure.
this week is challenging since it’s christmas week, but i’m on track so far.

my weigh-in is on mondays. i’d like to do 4:3 starting the 29th. that will be a little more balanced for me. i’ll keep posting my progress and reading whatever is written here. . . . i’ve bought and read the book: the 5:2 diet and the fast diet.
it’s helpful to re-read both books again.

wishing everyone “food-safe” holidays.

I have done 24 hours on just water, black coffee and green tea. Because I am an emotional eater I have found that a large glass of water or the above does quell my hunger. This is probably because what I thought were hunger pangs was actually my body telling me it needed water.after the fluid my hunger pangs subsided. Also on the fasting days (500 calls or less) I have much more energy, so I assume from this that I consume far more calories than my body needs.
My sister says she imagines the hunger pangs to be little tiny varmits eating away at her fat! It makes her feel good and I guess whatever works for you!

Hi all,
today is my first day of the 5:2 fast diet. I’ve been on other programs like the Dukan diet. This worked fine the first time round and I lost all the weight I wanted to lose. But it was a huge effort: eating only proteins is difficult in a way, then running or doing other exercises time permitting was ok. But the problem is, if you don’t change your life style and habits you pile all the lost pounds back on. So did I. The second time I tried the Dukan diet was a fail. Just couldn’t make myself eat all this protein… I’ll give this one a go. It seems to be a bit easier and more logical than other diets or fads. Today is my first fast day. So far so good. I’ll be on a Monday and Thursday fast. I hope I’ll be as successful as some of you guys here! Your comments are very encouraging. Thanks and good luck to you all!

Good on you JudithAnne! I follow the same fast schedule as you – no food until 8-9pm. My hot tips: prepare for the hunger to come in waves, drink herbal tea (my favourite is jasmine) and plan a meal to look forward to. Good luck!

I am really struggling to lose weight with this diet. Just completed week 1 with no difference in weight whatsoever!!!

I have stuck to my calories on both fast and non fast days and so now feel completely disheartened to continue which is a shame as I found this really simple to follow!!

Hi little missfatty, I agree with MaryAnn, don’t weigh yourself all the time. It gets frustrating. I have difficulties losing weight, it took me forever to get started. But looking back I understand why. I still took too many calories onboard when I was fasting and also on feast days. To get a feeling for how many calories you consume check the internet i.e. google: calories in bananas or calories in bread. You’ll soon get the idea of the right measures. Also have green tea, lots of cold water, eat lots of salads without the fattening salad dressings in the shops. Make your own. It’s easy. In the summer eat lots of fruit like water melons, they’re low in sugar and calories but you’ll feel full due to the fibre. Stay also away from shop bought juices. They contain loads of sugar and no fibre. Fibre is what fills you up. So eat whole grain foods and drink loads. You’ll see, with a bit of exercise you’ll lose the weight! Good luck!

HI Fluffy Chenille, yes, I do that. Lemon juice has been found to help avoid kidney stones. Thank you. I also do the honey thing but usually use manuka honey. Thank you.

I wish! I have a full gb – found in a scan for something else.
There are many ‘flushes’ advertised on the internet but I think the ‘stones’ people are some sort of saponification from the oil and vinegar that the flushes consist of. I have never found any real research into the flushes though.

I have only found one piece of real research that says fasting over 14 hours leads to the gall getting saturated and then stones are more likely to start or grow. That’s a real shame as I found 36 hour fasts (before I knew I had gall stones) by far the easier way to fast.

Oddly the advice if you get when you have gb attacks is to eat low fat – yet eating fat stimulates the gb to empty so the gall gets less saturated.
I’ve yet to understand this.

I’m having difficulty getting going fasting but when I’m trying I start the day with lemon juice in water, a gulp of linseed oil (to stimulate my gb) and a ts manuka honey.

I cant find any evidence that lemon juice in water actually helps gs (dissolves them???) but it is recommended for kidney stones (backed by real research. Although it’s obviously acid, it acts as an alkaline once in the body (I don’t understand how) but it makes kidney stones less likely to form. So may have a similar effect on gs.

Weightloss surgery (so very fast weightloss) is hugely associated with gall stones. (In some countries they take the gall bladder out when placing gastric bands as it’s so common.) 1 Kilo per week seems to be OK but more can lead to gs. That’s what doctors have said but the 1 kilo is often banded around in every weightloss context.

Personally I think the prevalence of gs is yet another side effect of our carb rich diet.

I always write too much. I’m not sure if it’s helpful!

Hi Mahalo,

I am no expert, just a fellow follower of the 5:2 diet, now for just a year (one year ago I started on the 1st of October). I have in the meantime lost 27 kg (in about 23 weeks) and lost about 18 cm of girth!! (yippee). All my vital heath signs have been reduced to a normal level (blood pressure, glucose etc). I am very happy indeed.
I believe, that my own metabolism is very much affected (maybe due to age). I never used to sweat (oops perspire), and when one considers that for every ltr of sweat one can ‘lose’ 7000 kCal then I believe that that has a very big influence on ones energy balance!! My own temperature is also always 35.8 deg C (generally speaking 1 degree lower than ‘normal’).
I do Spinning with HIIT training session to increase my metabolism (and then I sweat).
But I believe that ordinary walking exercise does not ‘burn’ any calories, one must get ones heart rate up to about 80% of max to have any effect.
I read that when one drinks water then one puts back on weight what one has sweated, I do not believe that. Of course drinking water does increase one’s weight, that is quite understandable, but indeed, when one either passes water and other waste products then one must also ‘lose’ weight!! It still does not count for the fact that each liter of ‘sweat’ should lose about 7000 kcal (adiabatic cooling of the body).
So it is of course I believe important to indeed drink water to stimulate this process.
These are my thoughts on this subject.