LJ, I wouldn’t like to offer advice for tree re-planting in S.A. but we had to take out a row of six camelias when we extended our house years ago. We moved two within our own garden which survived perfectly as did a beautiful white one that we gave to friends (regretted that ever since). Here in Perth, they do fine in full sun so it might be that you don’t have to relocate yours – better seek local advice though!

Merry and Intesha, thanks for the info on excess skin – or lack thereof. Merry, it’s good to know that all’s well with your FIL. I’m still writing that email I owe you btw!

Cinque, congratulations to your daughter for passing her driving test! Hurray for that freedom (for you and her). Hope all’s progressing well with the community project.

Cangel, yes it’s sometimes hard to convey one’s exact meaning in this format – much better expressed in person over a cup of coffee. Anyway, I think you can be confident that everyone’s comments are well-intentioned and we all want everyone to succeed. Of course, as with any advice, you can take it or leave it!

Lael, I hope you’re keeping your head above water. And that your FDs are going well.

Oh dear, we’re on a new page which means I can’t scroll up to remind myself who said what. I know that Pint (Lynn) and GDSA posted. Hi to you both. And hi CR. There was talk of egg whites in cartons – now that evoked a childhood memory from boarding school. They used powdered eggs and a house mistress would serve hard dollops of it out of a large bowl for tables of ten, but the cooks also cracked in the odd whole egg, shells and all – we assumed so that we’d be fooled into thinking we were eating fresh eggs. We weren’t. Vaderz, what kind of chickens are yours?

The temperatures in Perth might look low – and they are for the time of year, but wow, the humidity was so high today. It sucks the life out of you.

Not sure about this…

Had stuff to do when I got home yesterday (FD) so I had no dinner. Breakfast 265 calories total for the day.

Today decided to skip breakfast, with dinner will be 189 calories total.

Is there any problem with having much less than 500 calories on a FD? I reckon there’s a reason why it’s set at 1/4 TDEE but haven’t found anything that says it’s not good to eat less than that.

Hunger not an issue because I’m never hungry. Ever.

Hi Angel

Good to hear from you. Part of the healthy aspect of this WOL is that eventually most of us get back our normal appetite. Unless you have an eating disorder I would follow your appetite on your fast days, and only eat what you need to be able to sleep at night.

However, the calories that you do eat need to be nutritious so that your body can heal itself.

We have to unlearn the lessons that were drummed into us to eat every two hours, and to eat three square meals a day. Most of us only need two meals a day, and lots of food free hours in between.

If you read Michael Mosleys book, and you read Jason Fung’s blog, there is evidence that the body needs longer periods of fasting to heal itself.

Cheers, Bay

Good morning everyone!
Happy Fast Day Lael! I hope your new timetable falls nicely into place.

Hi CAngel, the 500 calories for fast days is your upper limit. I usually have around 350, some people don’t have any at all.
Have you talked to your doctor about never feeling hungry? I remember going for a long time without feeling it when I first stopped eating sugar… but after 24 hours or so of not eating I was hungry. Did you get hungry as a child? It will be a wonderful day when you do feel hungry. 🙂
You might be a good candidate for having fast days where you don’t eat anything, just drink water.
Nice second post. 🙂

I hope you have less humidity today Thin! I hate it! Although it is easier when it isn’t too hot.

Merry, you must be a great at sewing to take jeans in! (What a mess I would make of it). I am going to take two lovely silk skirts to the professionals to get the waists taken in a couple of inches (need to check with friends to find who is good). I love them so much.

It is cool here, and has been raining. My favourite weather. Fast day tomorrow.

Morning all.

Thin – we have 4 chooks, 2x ISA Brown and 2x black ones… (I think they are Barnevelder’s).

CA – there is nothing wrong with eating nothing on your FD’s, it’s what people doing water fasts try to do… but there’s nothing wrong with eating 1/4 of your TDEE either.

The reason why the book says 500 calories on your FD is to keep thing simple and to make things easier to maintain week in and week out.

No matter how much of the science behind fasting is/might-be/isn’t right, weight loss is still always going to come down to the basic energy equation (can’t get around the basic laws of thermodynamics – energy can’t be created or destroyed, it just changes form).

Now, in simple terms (there is a lot more to it than this), 1 pound of fat requires 3500 calories of energy to release into a form that can be used to power your body. For an average female whose TDEE is 2000 calories, having two days a week eating 500 calories, and the remaining 5 days at the normal 2000 calories gives an overall reduction of 3000 calories for the week… so, all things being equal, you would lose just under a pound of fat each week (which is why you will hear that the average weight loss on 5:2 is about 1 pound – or 0.5 kg per week, strictly speaking, if you followed 5:2 to the letter, the average loss would be just under that).

Of course nothing is completely straight forward, or the same for everyone. There are a number of factors that can affect the actual results and for the most part, everyone is an individual and your results are going to vary when you compare things to any other individual… some factors could be insulin resistance, cortisol levels, under/over estimation of the calories you eat, under/over estimation of your activity levels (for calculating your TDEE), whether you’re losing some lean muscle mass, water retention – any number of things could be going on! Because there are so many factors affecting nutrition, scientists find it very difficult to isolate just one variable and consequently you’ll find studies that on the surface appear to contradict other studies (doesn’t mean any of them are necessarily wrong, just that some of the assumptions behind what some of the results mean might be).

…the 500 calories is just a simple way to ensure you get that calorie deficit. What would you rather do, eat 1500 calories every single day (and gradually lower that as your weight and TDEE decreases) for pretty much the rest of your life (eventually that will get to a maintenance level). Or have 2 days a week where you don’t think about eating and not really worry too much about what you eat on the other days (yes, that 2000 calories will decrease over time as you lose weight, but will always be higher than the ‘traditional’ every-day diet that has no room for error and doesn’t really have any way to recover from an all-you-can-eat buffet)

Here is a fabulous song that says it all. Stay with it.

The Song – Butter Makes Your Pants Fall Off is on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5S6YUDJ9HI&sns=em

Bay,

That song puts Dr Fung’s message into a 5 minute memorable soundbite. How do we make it go viral?

Val

Well done, Merry

Great to see actual ways in which we get to goal. My method involved lots of homemade green and red vegetable soup. No white foods except full fat white yogurt. Some Nuts and lean meat and lots of fish.

Cheers, Bay. 🌺🌺

Note to any Americans reading- in Oz we write the date differently to you, so the date and month are reversed

Exercise:
This is a big challenge for me, having ME/CFS, and having had it for nearly 2 decades. Before that I was very fit and healthy, walked 1 1/4 hrs, flat out 6 days a week as a base before doing anything else. I actually found that exercise curbed my appetite, and that, left to itself, with no exercise, as I’ve been forced to do, my appetite has no regulator. Lack of exercise has been a real challenge. So….now I’m a normal weight, slap bang in the middle of my healthy weight range, I’m looking at what I can accomplish with my energy challenges. A bit weird when both aerobic and non-aerobic exercise are contra-indicated! However, I’m going to have a go exerise experiment time has started this week.

I’ve have started counting steps/day, includes stairs:p, just my normal day:
Friday 3625
Saturday. 2604
Sunday. 4230
Monday. 3739
As you can see, not a lot happening, lots of slow stairs on Sunday, and calf cramps waking me that night.
I really don’t know if I can get my stepcount up on a regular basis. My exercise pysiologist keeps my joints working, muscles stretched and working. This year we’re going to attempt to increase my strength a bit, especially my legs, particularly thighs. Also this year I want to start some very gentle bushwalking – that sounds so improbably weird right now😬 I would love to do HIT, but that’s a bit like flying to the moon

So what exercise does everyone else do?
Keep getting back on the horse,
Merry

Merry/Bay – there are just as many studies out there showing improved fat loss on high carb diets as there are low carb diets and balanced diets and just about every combination you can think of in between… the key thing seems to be that individually, different people react in different ways to different foods, so whatever works for you (especially if you can maintain it), is the most important thing (but yes, we all need at least some carbs/protein/fat and also need to make sure we get enough other micronutrients in our diet).

For people with some stubborn insulin resistance for example, low carbs can work really well (that’s not a requirement of it working well, just appears to be one group that struggles on a higher carb diet).

…either way, after a period of time (I’ve seen 8-weeks mentioned in places, but not really sure, I guess there is plenty of variation here too), your body is going to adapt to make best use of the various macronutrient levels you’re giving it. If you eat predominately lower carb, your body will adapt to use less glycogen… if you then have a big carb binge to break that, it may lead to some extra short-term fat gain, so best to make any big shifts in levels over a few weeks if possible.

For really active people, particularly those who are concerned about performance levels in their sport, a higher carb diet seems to (generally) be the best choice (using glycogen as your main fuel source is usually more efficient for activity)… with the possible exception of endurance athletes who need to rely on burning fat as the main fuel source to complete their event.

There are some interesting studies going on at the moment where these endurance athletes follow a ketogenic diet to better adapt their body to use this fuel source more efficiently… interestingly, to maintain a constant state of ketosis, they apparently need to eat a diet of about 70-75% fat (you better like avocados and walnuts), 20-25% protein, 5% carbs. They are finding that if their protein gets up around the 40% mark, then enough of that gets broken down into glycogen to knock them out of ketosis (not eating for a couple of days and then eating low carbs will have you in ketosis for a few days probably, but not constantly, which is what they were trying to achieve with these athletes).

…a really good podcast episode that I listened to just yesterday actually, touches on a lot of this stuff: http://sigmanutrition.com/episode152/ (they are interviewing Lyle McDonald from Bodyrecomposition.com – I posted a link to some of his articles a couple of days ago).

There is plenty of really interesting stuff in there about high/low GI carbs and some basic psychology triggers etc. too – if you’re mildly interested in this kind of thing, it’s worth a listen 😉

Hi Bay, hi Vaderz,

Thanks Bay, my nonFD diet composition is different where I add in some nuts, a little cheese, eggs, avocado, etc, but salads and veg are a staple on any day. I have extensive intolerance challenges, so sometimes my choices are guided by that as well. Interestingly, to me anyway, since I had the nasty virus and subsequent ME/CFS I just feel I ‘have’ to have lots of leafy greens. Not a craving as such but…. So I do.

Thanks Vaderz, and I’ll have a listen to the podcast and I now have a bit more time so thanks for the reminder re the links a couple of pages back. I once lived on the Pritikin 3% fat version for 11 yrs because of heart disease issues in the family, along with a group of others, including a surgeon, doing the same. On that, 80% complex carbohydrates, 3% preferably monounsaturated fat, and legumes, beans, egg whites etc for protein, 1 100gm piece of fish, chicken etc a week, and 1/month red meat for me. You had to make sure you ate enough to keep your weight up. All the diabetics in the group either had their diabetes cured or medication halved, type 2 of course. Several of the group were amatuer endurance athletes. Having been on the forum for over 2 yrs now, it’s been clear that people on 5:2 lose their weight on many varied regimes, and it’s been fascinating seeing how individually different peopke are in their reactions to specific foods or food types.

Re the exercise, thanks. I will be taking it very easy, very gentle, very short, and in the company of my husband, who understands my needs fairly well. I need to walk at my pace, not other people’s, but I’m quite happy in my own company too, enjoying the trees and little plants, insects etc. would you believe that my native state is hyperactive. I live a tenuous balance between the 2 extremes, but I manage quite well. I miss the bush though. I have learnt a lot of patience and to savour the little things🙂

Merry

Decided yesterday to map out my week’s food in a spreadsheet – you know, obsessive compulsive!

It was a really interesting exercise. I added in all the foods I’m likely to eat in a week – including the naughty foods. I also had a list of other foods that I eat rarely (the really naughty foods).

Usually when I eat something I just add it to my tracker without paying attention to how many calories are in it – unless the tracker goes red to say I’m over. Putting it all on a spreadsheet was a real eye-opener.

Impulstives might laugh at this but, I now have a plan for what days of the week I am allowed to eat naughty things and how much I can eat of them. To me, this is a realistic plan that I can definitely manage and not think I’m missing out (not that I eat that many naughty things).

This will eradicate the ad hoc “when I feel like munching on something” action. I can say, “No, you can’t eat that until Saturday”. It’s the same process as managing a fast day. My prediction is that this will happen:

At some time in the not so distant future, when it comes the day I’m allowed to eat something naughty, I’ll think about the consequences and elect to not eat it – and feel good about it.

That’s what I reckon anyway.

According to my plan, I have 1,520 calories left over in the week in case a glitch happens.

Hi Charlotte
whoops, edited!!

I always eat the egg yolk, particularly on fast days. I begin my fast day with a poached egg, and spinach. All the food I eat is whole food, including full fat Greek yogurt, butter and cream as appropriate. For the nutritional value.

My motto has always been to eat foods that would be recognised as food by my grandmother.

Cheers, Bay

CAngel, I’m a spreadsheet addict from way back. Everything important to me has a spreadsheet, including my diet. The thing that it provides is enough detail for you to see patterns. You can see what you eat and when you eat it. If you include a section for notes you can even track events and emotions to eating patterns – depending on what you are trying to change this detail can be really helpful.
Everything I’ve eaten since 2013 is in my food planner spreadsheet – I kid you not. I now use it as both a planner and a tracker. At the beginning of the week I plan the main meals and then I roughly plan the minor meals, then I construct my shopping list from that plan. Each day I edit the plan to record what I actually ate. I used to also calculate all of the kilojoules consumed as well, but I stopped doing that a year ago on the dietitian’s advice – she was worried about how obsessed I was with monitoring my food intake – at the time I was at my chosen goal weight and just trying to maintain, not lose. Since starting 5:2 in January I have monitored kilojoules on FDs, although I always seem to choose one of about 4 meal options that I know will fit into a FD, so I could probably stop monitoring those days as well unless I’m trying a new recipie.
I don’t mean to encourage you to be obsessive, just monitor enough that you learn something useful and stop when it ceases to be useful.

Yesterday’s FD went well. Although today is a NFD I have to also be somewhat careful as I’m having my rheumatoid treatment tomorrow and I seem to have fewer side effects if I’m careful with both my calorie level and fat intake in the 2-3 days before an infusion. I think this is because my liver is the main work engine for dealing with both the fat content in my food and also in metabolising the treatment drug – essentially if I give it too much work to do it lets me know it’s not happy about it. So I try to give my liver an easy time in the days before treatment in the hope that it will be able to cope better – this mostly seems to work quite well.

CharlotteRose, I do eat egg yolks. I eat eggs boiled, poached, scrambled, curried, omelettes… I love eggs. On a NFD I usually only eat whole eggs. But on a FD I eat only one meal and I want it to be a normal sized evening meal. One of my frequent FD meals is an omelette, and for me a dinner sized omelette is 3 whole eggs. If I use those calories on the eggs then I have few options remaining for the filling. So I started substituting some of the whole egg for egg whites, so that I could be generous with my fillings and still stay within my calorie limits for the day. After experimenting I found it was important for flavour to keep a whole egg in the omelette mix. I use 1 whole egg and 1/2 cup egg white – this has the volume of a 3 egg omelette but the calories of 2. Most of the calories I save with the egg white I “spend” on cheese, as an omelette isn’t complete for me unless it has either strong cheddar or parmesan in it, in addition to whatever veggies I’m using.

Thin, thanks for letting me know that your camelias have survived in a sunny spot. Adelaide has pretty similar heat to Perth, so that’s reassuring. I think I’ll see how they go for the rest of summer before I decide what to do.

Hope you all have a good day. I’m off to make some lunch – homemade spelt-rye bread with homemade hommus, cold cooked turkey breast, baby spinach & beetroot leaves and tomatoes, followed up with some fresh pineapple.

Hello spreadsheeters!
And a few unorganised people like me!

I hope your humidity isn’t coming over here Thin, but I do hope it leaves Perth.

I changed my fast day to tomorrow, just knew it would work better. But hi to those who fasted today, I hope you had a good one!

I’m another egg yolk eater! I did rather go off eggs when there was that theory that yolks were really bad for you (I’d rather not eat eggs at all than eat just the white). But the research has shown that the whole egg is a wonderful food and full of nutrition, and I am going through a lot of them at the moment as zucchini slice is a good way to deal with all the zucchinis I am picking (5 eggs in it!).

Getting prepared for a good fast day tomorrow. Cheers everyone!

Good morning fasters,
Regarding the camelias, they don’t mind full sun just give them plenty of water. I had beautiful white ones I planted at my house when I lived in Melbourne. The lovely white flowers were so plentiful and so fragile if you tried to pick them there was a lot of cleaning up the petals around the front garden.

Completed a FD on Monday which I was able to do a water fast. I was very busy in the afternoon and evening until 9pm and I was dreaming of soup for dinner then when i got home found I was out of that flavour. There was another flavour my daughter likes but I decided I would try to do a water fast. At 11pm after a couple of large glasses of water the pot came out of the cupboard and onto the stove then I said to myself your not getting any so I went to bed. I am not going to do the water fast on purpose anymore, it just plays on your mind a lot. My biggest fear was having to work in the morning early and not feeling like brekky knowing I wouldn’t be stopping for a break until 11.00am. I don’t like to eat breakfast at 4.00am or 5.00am. I like to wait an hour after getting up before eating.

Another FD today and I will be going to the shops to replenish my evening meal stocks.

Good luck to all fasting today especially any new or first timers

Meals for last FD:
1 x white coffee 150kj.

I’m going to try 4:3 this week. Second fast day today. I’ve worked out what works for me is to have a late breakfast, around lunchtime but eating my normal breakfast food, and then an evening meal. Skipping breakfast is easy I do this all the time with working nights so much. Skipping lunch is so hard though for me, I get light headed and headachy. I also don’t feel hunger, never have. I had to see a paediatrician as a child because I didn’t get hungry, therefore didn’t eat, and my weight had dropped right off.

By the way, I’ve added in salt water to my daily routine and not getting headaches at all on a fast day now.
http://www.thealternativedaily.com/7-reasons-drink-warm-salt-water-every-morning/
I’m using the Himalayan pink salt for this, just because I had it in the house.

Delicious butter chicken (homemade) on fast day Tuesday, 300 calories I would estimate. Just paste out of a packet and yoghurt instead of cream. Scrambled egg for lunch today, with fish sauce! Getting more aNd more adventurous every fast day.

Went to supermarket on a fast day, 100 calories under my belt, so much better than I thought. I saw treats but every time I asked myself do I need that, and every time the answer was no. Before I wouldn’t even have asked the question, even on an NFD. Cat’strying to help me now and I need to go back to work, so better go. Catch you later.

Hi Charlotte.
On fast days, eat as little as you can. Don’t eat MORE than 500 calories.

That number ‘500’ was picked because it is 1/4 of the average women’s TDEE, and is enough to make the day not seem unbearably fasty.
It was Dr Mosley’s sensible basic rule.
Even if your TDEE is less than 2000 calories (as mine is!) 5:2 will still work.

If it suits you, you can choose to make your fast day upper limit a 1/4 of your TDEE as it is now. Or you can calculate what your TDEE might be when you are at your goal weight, and use 1/4 of that as your fast day upper limit.

But if you just want to keep it super simple: less than 500 calories on your fast day.

Charlotte, was reading about dieting personalities last week, some get the title of Thinkers. That’s me, and I’m pretty sure it’s you too, if you’ll excuse the presumption. We fail at diets because we overthink things and then give up because it’s all too hard, and why bother if we can’t achieve perfection (following every single tiny rule) anyway. My advice would be don’t overthink this, though I think a lot of people underthink stuff, this is one place you don’t want to be overthinking. I’m trying not to myself. I’m just making one or two changes at a time, if you make too many changes all at once, you may well be setting yourself up to fail. I didn’t see anywhere in the book where it says you’re not allowed any food you want to eat, this is not one of those diets. MM says he personally cuts right down on simple carbohydrates, but frankly I’ve left some in, I don’t want to be binging on them later. I mostly have low GI carbs though, and I have cut down a little on 5:2. I’ve lost 4kg and about 8cm from my waist in just one month of starting 5:2, so I have faith it will work whatever you do, and nothing has worked for me in 10 years. I had instant noodles three times for lunch last week, not ideal, but my point is it doesn’t really matter. My stomach has shrunk already, and I’m making better choices. The whole point of this way of existence is that you can eat what you want but you might have to wait until tomorrow if you’re fasting that day. Then tomorrow comes and you don’t actually feel like it, or two mouthfuls is enough and you stop eating. You’re here, you’re already fasting two days a week, that is going to cut so many calories from your diet already, and I can bet you’re not going to make up the full 1500 calories (plus your 2000 calories TDEE) the next day. Even if you did, you’re still eating a lot less than before, and this way of eating is a lot more natural and gentle on the body. My digestion is really relishing the two days rest it gets every week. Even if you don’t lose weight, you’re still losing fat from around your organs, and you must feel a whole lot better, plus decreased your chances of heart attack, stroke and cancer. That has to feel good.

Oh and low fat dairy, I try to never eat or drink that. A lot of low fat stuff, the fat just gets replaced with carbohydrate (sugar) to make it taste better, also because the fat concentration is lower, the lactose is higher. Never trust low fat yoghurt, it almost always has extra sucrose added. Also I read something a while back that resonated with me as a scientist and it made sense. The cow has both male and female hormones, as do we all, and these go into the milk. Now when they take the fat out, the fat soluble hormones are also removed, this includes the female (steroid) hormones and vitamin D (which we need to metabolise calcium) amongst others. So if you’re drinking low fat milk, you’re only getting the male hormones, no female hormones, no vitamin D. This is just a hormone imbalance waiting to happen. I don’t drink homogenised milk either, the fat is broken up into the smallest possible particles, ready and available to go straight into the bloodstream. Not sure if the last one is a myth or not, but it does seem likely, and I’d rather not risk it. Also your cell walls and many of your hormones are made from cholesterol, this I know for a fact, so you do need some cholesterol.

Good morning all, lovely to have a return to normal weather where we are.

Drum roll please…….got my results from my doctor yesterday from Bone Mineral Density scans and blood tests. She told me I should celebrate! My BMD test was ‘perfect’ and she only sees 1 of those every few years. Rest of blood tests excellent, blood sugar perfect, BMI 22, breast check clear. Doing a very happy happy dance here. 5:2 has been very good to me! I set out 2+ years ago to normalise my weight because I knew it was the only thing left I could do that would improve my health, given the rest of my life would be spent with ME/CFS and recovery. So those last 20kgs that I had no way to get off are gone, my health is as good as it can be and nay-sayers and skeptics are now silenced as far as my situation is concerned. The doctor said that for my age, to see such perfect scores across the board is rare. Wow!!

THANK YOU DR MOSELEY! DON’T KNOW IF YOU’LL HEAR ME BUT THANK YOU!

And thank you to Thin, Cinque, Bay, Purple, Barata, simcoeluv, Buttonboots, and everyone on the forum who has helped me, inspired me, and gobe on this journey with me,

Hugs to you all,
Merry

Good morning,

its time for my Fasting Friday Forum Foray non-edible treat. My weekly scales outing show that I have lost 1.4 kg and 2% body fat since the end of January. We started 5:2 during the last week in January, after considering the BSD (I just couldn’t face waking up every morning to have only 800kcals EVERY day for eight weeks – and I’m not sure any weight loss is sustainable over time unless you are highly disciplined).

Ballroom dancing last week was a total ‘knee’ disaster. An Argentine tango style dance with swivels, flicks and kicks, put me out of action, exercise-wise, for nearly three days. Oh well, I’ll give the knee a week or two to recover, and then go social dancing at the Senior Citizens club (I keep having to remind myself that I am now a senior citizen, darn it). It’s a shame, as ballroom dancing is the only sport that DH and I are good at (since we gave up competitive ten-pin bowling twenty years ago). However, we have added two HIIT sessions to our daily walk. I fantasize that I look like an Olympic road-walker from the back as I pump along, but I probably look like a constipated duck!

Just in case some of Southern Hemisphere friends get confused, I read most of the “Recent Posts” every day, but only post to our forum; just in case you wonder what generates the musings that percolate through my brain.

Firstly, well done Merry, I am so pleased about your medical results. That’s one 2+ years case study! There has been some discussion this week about Biggest Loser contestants, who adopted Eat Less Move More diets, regaining all the weight (and more) when followed up after seven years. There was a hint of complacency among some 5:2 adherents who “are losing weight the right way”. Only problem is, 5:2 in its current form has not been around seven years for an equivalent follow-up. We will need lots of successful WOLers for an equivalent follow-up in four or five years to convince health authorities, dieticians, (and Australia’s CSIRO who promote a ‘competing’ diet).

This week I have read Dr Fung’s ‘Obesity Code’, and watched Dr M’s ‘Fast’ and Dr Robert Lustig’s ‘Sugar’ videos. What did I learn? Weight loss is a positive side effect of 5:2 fasting, and hopefully I shall remain compos mentis longer to enjoy my good health. Fructose is hard on the liver, but an increasing component of modern foods. Artificial sweeteners are not good for tackling obesity, as they raise insulin levels, but not glucose levels. [Shared this with my son, who has a great love of diet soft drinks, and his OH who is a GP .]

I also took a look at the 2015 Dietary Guidelines from the USDA (the people who gave us the healthy eating pyramid, with lots of processed carbs underpinning the daily intake in 1975). The new version looks positively sensible; BUT it looks as if they are attempting to walk a fine line between taking note of the latest dietary research as to the causes of obesity, and not offending the big food conglomerates who are providing the fuel. As I see it the problems will be: are those people at whom the guidelines are targeted going to understand what is meant by ‘nutrient dense’ foods, and that ‘added sugar’ means more that just heaping the white stuff into tea/coffee and onto cereals; and will the guidelines carry over into the aid programs that support the disadvantaged members of the community?

Finally, I am so over people quoting the laws of Thermodynamics to support the simplistic ‘Calories in, Calories out’ statement. First, our bodies are not a closed system and, secondly, if thermodynamics is so simple why did I spend 3 months studying it in my physics degree!

That’s probably a long enough post, and a sufficient rant, for this week.

Take care, and cherish yourselves, Val

I just remembered the other thing I wanted to write about. About loose skin, I’ve been thinking more and more about it these days, I was in fact researching a few months ago, before I even knew about 5:2. At 41 I hope my skin is still young enough to bounce back. At around 28-29 I lost 10kg and no loose skin, but now I’ve got a lot more weight to lose than that, and another 13 years. I’m 78kg now, and would like to be 53-55kg (BMI 23 I think that was) because that was a nice weight on me. My fat is becoming quite loose and wobbly since starting 5:2, I think that’s a good thing, but loose skin is one thing that terrifies me because I don’t want to have surgery and I can’t afford it anyway. So I read one website that said loose skin just meant there was a fat pocket under the skin that you still had to loose, admittedly the guy saying it was athletic and probably had a body fat of 10% but it did make me wonder. Also I bought one of those vibration trainers a while ago, I lost some girth the first week I used it, so I wonder if that will help tighten up my skin, or will it vibrate it all loose again? I forget who said they can’t exercise on here, but maybe that’s a good option for you too? It even makes my chronically sore, arthritic feet feel a lot better. You can also take classes (I’ve done these before), but mine was only $300 and you’d go through that pretty quickly on the classes, and they were only 15 minutes three times a week, whereas I can do this whenever I want and in my pyjamas if I like. I also want to get back into yoga, most of the websites I looked at said some form of exercise will help tighten the skin. I haven’t done extra walking for a long time, I do 5000-15,000 steps a day just at work, and I’ve had pesky plantar fasciitis for over a year.

The laws of thermodynamics collided with my brain and burst.
I’ve had a couple of days of strange emotional eating and am very glad of my fast day today.

I’m writing on my iPad so here are some good morning flowers 🌷🌹🌺🌸🌼🌸🌺🌹🌷

I’ve been wondering what the feeling of hunger is. Is it a particular thing, or a label we give to a raft of physical signs we associate with needing, or wanting, to eat? I’ll research a bit later.

CAngel, that is disappointing about your body scan. I am glad your consultant is happy with your plans, and we are all cheering you on. Hooray for your almond trees too, oh the delicious taste of fresh, home grown almonds!

Merry, cheers and woot for you! Hooray for 5:2! 🎉✨🎈✨🎉

LJoyce, so sad that you don’t get any of your walnuts! I remember eating a fresh, sweet, creamy one in Switzerland years ago, and have dreamed of fresh ones since. I hope you have had a lovely cool weekend, and that you don’t need any more of your RA infusion for a while. I hope the minestrone was made. I am hungry for a hearty soup. I nearly made some with my chickpeas, but no! I made crunchy chickpea salad and it was scrumptious, and more in the fridge for tomorrow!

Perthgirl, so sorry to hear your tango days may have come to an end. Such a bummer. I hope you can keep dancing in other styles. Don’t try the twist!! 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻
I work with the Australian Dietary Guidelines for my community food project and they seem similar. Good basic guidelines, but still quite conservative. ( It breaks my heart to use margarine instead of butter, for YamDaisy food, but that is still the recommendation).

Vaderz I listened to some of that link. It is a good message to get out. So many people grab a simplistic health message and hold onto it, instead of getting a fuller picture.
I think my favourite commentator for healthy eating is Michael Pollan.

Jody I think you are so right about youth and slower weight loss helping with skin shrinking. But oh isn’t it hard for those who are not so young and whose skin doesn’t manage to shrink back. I hope your vibration trainer keeps working!
So sad about your apple tree! A crime.
Meyer lemons are my favourite!

Well I am so grateful for my fast day. Sending best wishes to everyone! 🌿🌿🌿

Hi all, hope you are all having a relaxing and enjoyable Sunday.

Cinque, glad you enjoyed the crunchy chickpea salad, and yes I did get the minestrone made – I ended up with 4 litres, half of which I’ve frozen for later. It always amazes me just how much soups like minestrone thicken the next day. I used navy beans and lentil-rice pasta in the soup and I really like the result.

Thin – I completely understand the draw a bag of nuts can have. One of my high danger foods for bingeing is nuts, just about any type is a risk, and if I don’t have any in the house I have been know to attack the jar of almond paste with a spoon in my weaker moments. I’ve found that I can keep some raw nuts in the house and (mostly) control myself. I never buy roasted nuts (or even worse, roasted and salted) as I just won’t stop until they are all gone.

Next week I have a lot of social events to deal with as there is a flurry of family birthdays, so I decided I needed to do a little extra on the diet front this week. I’m going to try just eating dinner (which is what I do, usually with ease, on FDs). One meal means my daily calories will be lower than usual every day – probably around 800. I’m assuming that as this is the BSD level, then one week at this calorie level shouldn’t cause me any harm. Not something I’d want to do long term, but I’d like to see how I go for 1 week. I’m hoping it will put me in touch with my appetite, as I’m normally not hungry until late afternoon and I want to see what happens if I have a week where I am only eating when hungry – not something I have much experience with as I have a habit of eating at meal times whether I’m hungry or not. I may abandon this mid week and go back to 5:2 early, but I’ll give it a go.

Hope you all have a good week.

Cold Cinque? It’s 38C here in Perth. But the ghastly humidity has gone. 27C tomorrow.

Fortunately, the macadamias were very expensive so it’s an occasional treat. I have half a bag left and I’ll be counting them out from now on. Maybe four a day…

Good luck with your dinner only week LJ. I find it’s always better to plan ahead when there are social engagements rather than go into damage control afterwards.

Hunger: I have experienced some discomfort on occasion but never physical weakness from lack of food. I can walk for miles on an empty stomach or do a lot of gardening on a FD. I’ve certainly had plenty of experience with ‘a desire to eat’ (often not associated with hunger at all!).

Like most people here, through fasting, I’ve discovered that hunger comes and goes in waves and can be distracted by activity – it doesn’t have to be satiated with food. I’m the kind of person that likes to ‘finish the project’ rather than stop for food. OH eats by the clock which is annoying when we’re in the middle of, or just about to start, something because he’ll ‘have to eat’ before that activity can be resumed/undertaken. I don’t know what he thinks will happen to him but it’s almost a panic response to the clock.

I do sometimes notice a brain fog without food – difficulty following a recipe, for example, which is why I like my FD recipes simple. I suspect I’ve never truly known hunger – the most discomfort is from the hunger I feel when trying to get to sleep without enough food. Even then, I try to embrace it, think of the good it’s doing my body and look forward to weighing in the morning. Here’s to being hungry Cinque!

Tonight’s dinner is one of my old standby FD meals – 80gm steamed asparagus; poached egg; 50gm smoked salmon and 1 tbs FF yoghurt with fresh dill and lime juice. 195 cals.

Which reminds me, did I congratulate you on your water fast, Joffy? As I read your ‘calories for the day’ footnote, I did have a laugh. I white coffee I think it was. I am sure that you’d already completed the 24hr water fast on the evening of your FD – but you carried on until the next day. A stellar effort that makes me feel as though I’m having a total pigout today.