Hi everyone, I hail from the Perth Hills. It is great to see so much support here. My friend and I started doing the diet, or rather new lifetime way of eating, when I saw the S.B.S. programme. It just resonated with me. We both had fantastic results but I slipped off the bandwagon after going on a cruise and then having heaps of stress in my life. I am now back on the straight and narrow but am finding it hard to exercise, really no excuse, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak! I have an exercise bike but it is so damned uncomfortable that I now just spit at it as I walk past! I did go out for a few walks but it is not the same without a dog and I gave up on that too. What a sad sack! Anyway I will be reading posts with interest as there are so many good ideas. Cheers everyone.

Spot on Nicky
Lose the weight first and you will WANT to exercise. Don’t fret, Zhosha, it comes naturally as you feel lighter and healthier. Also, once spring hits you will feel more like getting out.
Incidental exercise is far more sustainable than “have to do” exercise. Sustainability is vitally important for continued health.
All the best
PVE

Good morning all

Pleased to report scales 0.8kg less than same time last week after B2B fasting.

Hi PVE, great idea to try to match activity with energy.

Also, exercise helps to banish the winter blues; unrelenting grey skies and wet weather for at least the next week here, following the same for the week just gone. I know winter is THE time for it in the south but good to get out in the wind for a walk, with waterproof/umbrella of course 🙂

Hi PVE

11,000 steps is such a lovely number – well done!

I’m doing my level best to keep warm, sitting in my heated office watching it pour outside and the trees flogging around 🙂 I usually start work at 7.30am so can leave in 40’. So glad have overcoat, gloves, umbrella ….

On the weekend I attempted a low GI version of veg patties/Jannsen’s temptation with abt 150g each of shredded raw leek, carrot, beetroot and swede, bound together with anchovies, an egg and raw lentil powder and baked. In theory good and only 93cal/pattie but should have steamed veg first and mixed with cooked lentils because it was very ‘worthy’ – bit much for OH, especially as the swede flavour was very strong. Back to the drawing board!

Hi everyone.

I find that if I have cauliflower rice with my meal it fills me up. 200 grams is 50 calories
I haven’t tried Miracle noodles but I will look for them in Coles. I find recipes on Pinterest
and I have bought the Fast Diet cookbooks. I am not good at counting calories so I find the books
help me when I am preparing meals. My husband does it with me which is great. I have just started a boot camp session once a week which helps with the exercise.
Have a great week everyone and keep warm
mygirl 🙂

Hi everyone 🙂

Newbie here from Hobart. I have bene watching some friends’progress on 5:2 and have now decided to switch from LCHF to 5:2. My first fast day is tomorrow.

I am 31, female, and want to lose 40kgs. Long road ahead but at least I am starting now.

Hi MelbourneMum – Thanks for the reply 🙂 LCHF is Low Carb High Fat.

I agree with you, the idea of this seems so easy to maintain and to adapt around events etc. I am feeling really positive about it. It sounds like it is working well for you!

I am going to try to get through today without eating until dinner. I have herbal teas and am having a coffee at the moment to wake me up. I always drink a lot of water so will keep that up too.

Welcome to all the new members of this list.
Not that I had done many diets before this, but I agree with everyone who says it’s more a way of life than a diet. That might not mean much when you’re just starting and just wanting to lose weight, but as you proceed with the 5:2, it has a way of changing you. Not just physically.
What I think is so special about it is the way you can carry on as normal for five days of the week – ie. most of the time. Well, for me, I was already a fish-eating vegetarian and ate a pretty wholefoods diet – I just ate too much of it! So I haven’t had to completely shift my thinking about food, just try and adjust the amount I eat and how often I eat and get more in tune with my body.
Sometimes it feels like magic to me that my body has changed so much because my life hasn’t changed dramatically – I don’t feel as if I’m on a diet, I don’t feel constrained, I don’t have to think about it 24/7, 7 days a week, I just don’t eat during the day for two days a week, yet it’s had an enormous effect on what I look like! And how I feel in and about myself.
I am still proceeding downwards at a very slow pace – have lost 1.4kg in the past three weeks, following a month-long plateau. The slowness of it is good – it means I can enjoy the new clothes I bought a few months ago which are now becoming a bit baggy. And it means that this slender me is for the longterm, for the rest of my life.
I had a skirt taken in by a dressmaker last week – the first time I’ve ever done that in my life! And it’s amazing to be able to walk into a clothes shop and know that anything I try on will fit me. No more embarrassing inability to even squeeze in to something which is supposedly my size.
Have a happy weekend!

Hi everyone. I am new to the blog and 5:2. In fact, I am so new I haven’t actually started yet! I am completing my reading this weekend and kicking off on Monday. I look forward to continuing to read all these lovely supportive posts.

Thanks @bayleafoz 🙂 I struggled a bit as the night went on but went to bed a bit early and made it through. Am doing another fast day today as I had a 500 cal breakfast and haven’t eaten since, easier for me to fast today as we were traveling for part of it.

Welcome kendo32. We come from all over and are in different stages if the 5:2 way of living = WOL you will see as acronym. Assume you have read the earlier posts about drinking 2 litres of water per day, and that you have read the FD book. This is a must do, so that you understand the reasons for your new WOL. Why intermittent fasting works and how it works. There are many supportive fasters on this thread. So go for it. Let us know how your first fast goes. 🙂 remember it’s only one day!

Hi everyone! I started 5:2 a few months ago and found it really works for me as a way of living most of the time. Overseas travel is a bit too tricky for me to conquer just yet. As of August I’m back to 5:2 fulltime.

Today is my first fast day in five weeks. I just keep reminding myself that hunger doesn’t build; it comes and goes. Drinking Jasmine tea also helps, as long as I don’t burn the tea and turn it bitter!

Hello my name is Jenny and I have been doing this for about 5 weeks now. I am losing cms and have lost about 3 kilos. I am really hungry today as it is so cold here in Melbourne. I am embracing feeling hungry and knowing it is just for a day. Love reading your posts and this WOL.

Hi Mamaleish
I’ve been away from my computer for a couple of days. Could only read, not type!
I was driven to connect up as I am freezing at my holiday unit and couldn’t get the aircon to turn on. Don’t normally need it, but with the particularly cold weather and the new thinner bod, I had to warm up. Did it! Yeah.
Ok, 16:8 is not eating from dinner one night to a late lunch the next day and then a dinner. (total 400-500 cals) then nothing until breakfast. That is, 2 small “meals” in 36 hours.
24:12 is nothing from one dinner until the next night, then eat your 400 or 500 cals, then nothing until breakfast. That is, one “meal” in 36 hours.
My husband does the latter. I find I get too desperate and would rather split it.
I had no breakfast today, then an apple, a couple of little veg patties and a lettuce leaf at about 2.30. (about 120 cals) Then made myself a “cookup” of lots of leftover veg, including cauliflower rice. Probably about 150 cal) Not strictly 16:8, but basically 2 meals, but no breakfast. I find eating anything at breakfast time these days just stimulates my appetite too much.
Hope this is clear.
All the best PVE 🙂

Thanks for that excellent explanation of the 16/8 and 24/12 purple veggie, that makes much more sense, and I’ve been doing the 5/2 for 14 months or so…and there’s still so much to learn!

It’s great there are enthusiastic new fasters starting and connecting with this forum, making these forums a part of changing your eating and lifestyle, is a positive tool and most helpful way to get feedback and much needed support when thing look like they are going slowly, or not as you expected.

I still keep to small breakfast, then small dinner on my fast days. I find it boring, but predictable and it works for me. So far I’ve lost 17.7 kilos, and am hoping to reach the 70 kilo mark by Friday morning, and then 65kg by the end of the year.

Things have changed so much for me since I started, that if had one woman who I knew reasonably well did not recognise me recently! I don’t think I have changed that much, but what this whole process has made me feel, is like looking after myself a bit better, instead of letting my whole character and personality feel like an old woman…I now feel so much younger, and took up dyeing the grey hair again, and have even booked myself in for a much needed re-style of my very long hair. I realised it had been over two years since I went to the hairdresser, because I had felt too old and not worth bothering with all the extra effort! So I’ve found some good pics of the kind of thing I’d like my hair to look like on the net, as well as a new stylist who’s more than willing to make it happen.

Now it may seem strange to those of you who get regular haircuts, but to me it’s a revelation! And I can thank the 5:2 for slowly, but surely changing my views on myself and how I want to feel and act in the world. Which is a much more outgoing, expressive and positive forecast for my future altogether!

So cheers all and happy fasting, however you do it!

Good on you, ihaveawaist!
I’m sure you’ll look (and feel) gorgeous in your new hairdo.
I think it important for all of us to reassess our “look” regularly so that we don’t get stale. In Mimi’s Beach Book she refers to the research showing we should frequently change things in our lives (even the route you walk to the shops) to keep from falling into habits. I do some crazy diversions on my walks now! This then, also, stops you eating out of pure habit, too.
Cheers PVE (btw, point 9 overnight here at my holiday place. Thank goodness the sun is now up again!)

For newbies,
Friendly beginner advice. :). I would stick with the book and not try 24 hour fasts to begin with. I have never done such a fast and never will. I lost the 15 kg and 15 cm off waist by sticking to the book. Plus eliminating all forms of sugar and processed food. Am very happy with BMI and reduced BP pills.

I don’t think I was rushing into it, I was just doing fasts on the two days that worked for me.

I think I am better off doing one meal a day only, gives me one good meal to look forward to and stops cravings. I have tried before to do 500 calorie days and if I eat a couple smaller meals I get hungry and just want to eat and eat and eat. It’s just what works for me.

Scout
Spot on. If it works for you and you can continue it, do it. We are all different. It is just worrying when we get people who jump into it (not you) and go over the top and drop off quickly.
It IS strange how not eating is much easier than a little nibble, isn’t it? Gets the system going and makes it very hard to stop. I guess that’s the reason why cutting out snacks on normal days also works so well. It IS harder to have “just on biscuit” than it is to have none.
Certainly, having most, or all, of your calories in the evening on a fast day aids sleep.
Sounds like you know what you are doing. Well done! PVE

I’m someone who has breakfast at home (usually on egg) then goes to work and doesn’t eat, then comes home and has dinner – fish and steamed veges. I find that mental separation between home and work makes it easy for me. Eating breakfast doesn’t make me want to keep eating – I also think that having pure protein stops the hunger. On the rare occasions I have porridge for my fast breakfast I immediately want to eat toast.
Just to reiterate what others have said, take it easy and you will find it easier to keep going. I’m 7 months in and have lost 10.5kg, now at BMI 22.7. I’m semi maintaining but also inching downwards as I want to get 2-3kg further along but it may well take me another six months.

Hi everyone

On FDs I too have a small breakfast, spend the day at work with black tea and lots of hot water, then light meal in the evening, usually a cut-down version of what we would normally have so no need to prepare something more filling for OH. If things get grim I have a cup of miso soup about 2pm (30 cals).

Have said before that OH is convinced I’d faint at the wheel on my way to work if I didn’t have breakfast so have small porridge, an orange and black tea. In the past, before he retired, he spent time away for work so then didn’t have breakfast.

Whatever works for each individual is the key.

2nd FD today so good vibes to others doing the same.

Don’t you love the variety of approaches? As a retired “old girl” I find it easier to skip breakfast, get busy doing things and eat when it suits. Obviously, if you go to work, it works well eating early. Although my husband has even given that up.
At little tip…
I have just cooked a delicious bacon, corn, cauliflower and goat’s cheese frittata. (It’s not a fast day!) I ate about 1/5th and let it cool. SO tempting to eat it all! So I cut it into serving portions and froze it immediately in zip lock bags. Out of temptation’s way. It then takes concerted effort and planning to nibble on the rest.
I HAD to do something as I watched the whales cruising northwards past my window, didn’t I? 😉 PVE

Thanks – I will have a look when I go grocery shopping tomorrow 🙂

Hi Scout,

I’m another Miso soup fan. When 5 o’clock comes around I have a mug of Miso and it keeps me going – I think for comfort as well as hunger.
The one I like is Spiral brand Red Miso Instant soup which is just 22 calories. Most health food shops and some supermarkets that keep Spiral products will have them. Mind you the only super markets left are the IGAs. The big ones are are cutting out good food lines – no longer super in my view. My local IGA has pretty well everything I want including good seafood.

Sometimes I add a squirt of tamari and occasionally throw in baby spinach leaves and just let them wilt in the hot soup.

Spinach leaves! What a great idea. Thanks for the tip!