Hello shell tree and all others.
The only obvious difference i see in doing 4:3 is that with an extra fast day you are bound to lose more if you can stick to your TDEE on non-fast days and not go over. But i suggest you make it easy for yourself and just do 2 fast days. Unless you have a metabolic disorder you should lose weight fairly steadily anyway. On non-fast days its recommended not to eat more than TDEE. You should lose this way, and after a while you may stall, then it would be good to reduce your calorie intake a little bit from your TDEE but don’t forget you have to recalculate your TDEE regularly anyway because it will change as you lose weight.

I suggest what you are currently doing, i.e. 1560 may be too low for you. When i started my diet i was about 80kg and i ate 1650 then 1600 7 days a week for 3 months with not much exercise (i’m quite a sedentary person) and lost most of my weight in that time. So my advice is don’t reduce your calories more than you have to show signs of weightloss. Doing so is just making it harder for yourself. There will be plenty of time in the future to eat only 1200 calories per day. Why make start early.

On this diet you can eat any type of food you want so long as the total calorie intake comes in on target. However, when you restrict calories, it makes more sense to increase the quality of the food to reduce the incidents of hunger and to maximise nutrition. So there should be less room in your diet for those “bad” foods. So you can eat dessert every day if you want but reduce your portions so that you don’t go hungry and break your diet. Learning to live without all that crap food is actually a lot easier than most people realise if you really want to. When you improve the quality of your savoury foods, you just don’t feel the need for sweet foods so much anymore. But i’m reading something very very interesting at the moment and it concurs with what i’ve noticed. (The End of Overeating by Kessler)

One idea i’m reading is: The right combination of sugar and salt and fat and salt, makes you want to eat more and this leads to out of control eating because of the way it affects appetite. I think it acts on our brains like drugs. So eating food that is less sweet and or salty is important. This is why fruit is fine and why icrecream, chocolate and potato chips are a danger foods. This is why one glass of milk is fine but why the same quantity of ice-cream is not. This is why a big bowl of fruit salad is ok but not a plate full of woolworths chicken. I bought one of these chickens as rare event earlier this year and saw that i was always in a hurry to get back and have some more until it was all gone.

Birdlady: Headaches like this are likely to come from dehydration. Lack of sugar doesn’t cause headaches. To improve the situation either just drink more water but better still have a cup of salty broth like miso or a stock cube or a tsp of vegemite tea.

You can watch the program on youtube its called eat fast livelonger.

Suetee, nothing will work if you can’t get your head into the right gear and commit. A successful diet is largely a matter of psychology. You have to be committed. And commitment has to be ongoing. I saw this yesterday on my fast. I wasn’t particularly hungry but it would have been so easy to change my plan to eating under 1000 calories a day instead of 500.

If you dont like counting calories, you should be able to drop the practice after a while but you should still food log until you are comfortable to go about at least estimating the right amount of calories. But if you are rigorous about it then you’d better stick with counting calories.

But i have found that a combination of rigorous foodlogging, daily weighing and choosing good quality whole foods (i.e. lots and lots of vegetables, enough dairy, no sweet treats) is sufficient for me to lose weight.

Jaksee your hangovers are from dehydration and possibly because of reduced carbs you are losing more water than you know. And also electrolyte imbalance, drink more salt broth – one a day when this happens. You should see the headaches pass quickly. Keep drinking more water. If your food is already very salty, you just need to drink more water.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SUGAR WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS. You will not get headaches from lack of sugar. Lack of sugar has only a positive effect on you. No negative effects whatsoever! Not in the short or long term. Some people might confuse the headaches from stopping soda drinks with the stopping of caffeine. Caffeine withdrawal can cause headaches.

IHAW, Agreend that was an excellent two part program. I would urge eveyrone to watch Catalyst – Gut Reaction (on iview) who can. And i was going to post some notes on it for the foreigners. Its good too because in recent years people have started saying that fibre doesn’t help prevent bowel cancer and so on, but now this shows that fibre is indeed vital. The essential point is – eat a lot of fibre. 50g or more per day is good.

When you are looking into fibre foods, look at insoluble versus soluble. There is an excellent discussion of fibre on the website nutrition wonderland.com. The article is to be found in one of the drop down menus at the top of the page. This site has other very good articles in it as well. I liked the ones on leptin, seratonin and insulin as well. Most dieters don’t know anything about the effects of hormones in our system and weightloss attempts. I’ve only learnt this year and i’ve found it bother fascinating and useful.

Kerpid daily weight fluctuations occur because of water reention so there are many factors affecting this including: salty foods, hormones, exercise, general hyrdation, eating less carbs.

TArkeeth, nice joke.

I did my one day fast yesterday. I am doing separate ones this week but will get back to doing two consecutive days next week. It feels easier to me. I find the second day easier than the first because the appetite effects have already kicked in.

Totally agree that most headaches are caused by dehydration. Drink at least 2 litres on a fast day.

Suggest reading David Gillespie’s book on Sugar to get an idea of its adverse effects.

Type the words “sugar withdrawal” into a Google search and see what you get. Headaches come up.

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Its easy to find verification for all sorts of myths about any topic on the internet. Its more enlightening to look for credible information contradicting the ideas you want to believe. That’s what scientists do. Here’s one thing i found and it directly addresses the rat study.

http://www.griesson-debeukelaer.de/enDE/quality/studies/detail/news/zuckersucht-ist-ein-ernaehrungsmaerchen/back/193/hash/41150d86ee3c11e88cc2829d27488e49/

In a nice little book i read recently by Dr George Blair-West and Australian psychiatrist. He referred to the notion of sugar addiction. He made the useful distinction that it in some people sugar creates addiction like responses. I think this is the truth of the matter.

What is your definition of carbohydrate?

This is how I understand it:

the term carbohydrate often means any food that is particularly rich in the complex carbohydrate starch (such as cereals, bread, and pasta) or simple carbohydrates, such as sugar (found in candy, jams, and desserts).

Sugar has carbohydrate in it and insulin is needed to covert it into energy. The carbohydrate that is in root veggies takes longer to digest, but insulin is still needed to convert it into energy for the body to use.

It seems you have restricted carbohydrate to mean only complex carbs, not simple. I am not sure that is a mainstream definition.

Thinatlast thanks for all the encouraging comments, also for the links. I think the tips about excercising are really helpful, just doing anything to take your mind off the hunger for 5 mins seems to help me and then I find I am okay for another couple of hours. I thought exercise would be really difficult when fasting but morning after after fast on both days last week I went for a run as usual with nothing to eat before hand and was fine after. Only felt a bit sick after I finally ate breakfast so I think next week will have to have maybe half as much and then a mid morning snack. Both husband and I are going well and looking forward to Monday and Thursday this week to see how we go on week 2. Am avoiding the scales until at least 2 weeks and will try to concentrate instead on how I feel and not what the numbers say. Ihaveawaist, I am going to check out that documentary you mentioned on Catalyst, sounds very interesting. Living with IBS all my life I am keen to pick up any tips or ideas that could help. Aitchbee, I cut wheat out of my diet last year after being seriously sick for about a week. The skin rash I had on my chin and face which I had been treating with antibiotics for several years went down considerably. It’s not perfect now but I am off the antibiotics and its seriously better than before. Other people I have spoken to have also cut out sugar.

Hi Charlie

I agree re A2 milk being far easier to digest. I switched to A2 milk in 2007 in NZ and all my bloat symptoms went away. Good luck with the cows.

Bay 🙂

Hi IHAW,
thanks for the recommendation for the show, will definitely check it out.
Thanks all for the welcome, it’s great to know you’re out there.
I hope you’re all doing well and hanging in there. How did the night shift go (sorry, can’t find the post so not sure anymore who it was)? I’m fasting again today and will be working later. Since it’s often so hectic I am optimistic that I won’t notice the hunger as much as I did on my first fast day when I was a bit sad and working at home…
I’m planning to play it by ear re which days I’ll fast on rather than having set days.
I drink loads, so I suspect the headaches are from low blood sugar. I’m hoping regular fasting will help reset my metabolism (which seems to have switched to ‘fat store’ mode since I hit my forties)…
Have a lovely Sunday, Sue

Hi IHAW,
My cows are doing fine and thanks for asking. We have had very little rain here the past month, but frost up until a week ago. Last couple of days have been in the twenties which puts one in a much better frame of mind for fasting. But we could do with a little rain.
Had two good fast days last week and managed to get things moving down again after two months of nothing, at least on the scales, but I have had to take in the waist of all my trousers another two inches. I now have a waist measurement for two sizes below what I am. I never thought I could get my waist below 100cm but I well and truly have so now I am believing that I can get it below 80cm like they say we all should. Off to do a dance with the vacuum, feel like some Irish Riverdance. What an influence you have become IHAW. 🙂
Cheers, Charlie

Good morning SH fasting friends.

Charlie, great clear explanation of A2 and A1 milk and thanks.

Like you we have had sunny days and frosty mornings but could really do with some more rain – had to water my pot plants yesterday. Not such an issue for me but thinking of all the grain growers who will be looking for more rain to fill the heads, and pastoralists who need a bit more for feed growth. This month here the average August rainfall is 147mm and we have so far only had 46mm – going to be a looooong summer if we don’t get much more.

Fasting tomorrow and Tuesday as usual for me – need it because have had a horrible cough and clogged sinuses and been craving (and succumbing to) sweet comforting carbs like biscuits.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Hi Nicky
Sorry to hear you have a bug. Lots of it going around all over Aust. It is always the way at the end of winter, isn’t it?
A couple of fast days does seem to “clear the system” though.
We will be in Port Lincoln tomorrow for a fast day, so plan to eat some of the local seafood with lots of lettuce. Should work.
Hope your health improves.
Cheers to all the other SHs. PVE

Hi Alison
(I’m escaping watching Dr Who!!)
No you don’t alter how much you eat on a fast day. The extra exercise is just a bonus. If you went over today, c’est la vie, but don’t make it a regular practice.
Try to keep below 500 cals (I usually do 350) and try to have a long non eating interval. (eg dinner until a late brunch, then nothing until dinner, then nothing until breakfast.) It is the long non eating periods, as well as the low cal, which allows the body to heal itself.
Don’t be tough on yourself. Just remember to avoid the situation where you might be tempted on fast days.
All the best, PVE

Hi everyone! It is officially the last week of winter and I cannot wait for spring. The Cootamundra wattle is already out in Harden NSW.

I’ve been meaning to say a big thanks to Charlie G for sharing that info on A1 and A2.

I have a question for “active” fasters. I run, work out or play netball every day of the week – sometimes more than one per day. I usually run in the morning before work but I find that exercise makes me hungry.

Does anyone have a timing strategy for exercise and food on fast days? My new plan is to run straight after work (even though it will be dark) and then eat right away. I’d love to hear how other people manage this.

Hi Charlie, thanks for your comments regarding the A2 milk. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I didn’t jump onto the forums yesterday. I used to purchase lactose free milk all the time but once I had kids all that went out the window. The amount I was spending on milk at one stage I couldn’t afford for it all to be lactose free! I’ve just recently decided that it makes more sense for me now to embrace the lactose free and gluten free lifestyle I used to follow pre-kids. So I’ll check out the A2 and see how it goes.
H

Hi all, due to a glitch in my system, I thought no-one had posted since my last one a few days ago and now I see that I have several pages of reading to catch up with…..thanks for all the insights.

We had a successful third fast day yesterday, Sunday. Kept busy and worked through the ‘hungry’ bits which seemed to peak shortly after eating or drinking. Makes the science of consuming low GI foods more poignant. It also makes me want to try and build up to fasting all day and then eating a higher calorie meal late in the day.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading a lot – and the advice is sometimes conflicting. Can I confirm with others my interpretation that it doesn’t matter when during the fast day you eat/drink your 500/600 cals? In a comparison study of various fasting methods, I read that the 5:2 was defined by the calories being divided between breakfast and dinner – which was not my understanding.

Tarkeeth, does the ’12 hour rule’ state that you must not eat for a full 12 hours at some point during a fasting day, say 7am-7pm? I’m a bit confused about this with our ‘fasting day’ not actually being a fasting day but a ‘severely restricted calorie day’. Sorry if I’m being totally thick but we’re currently consuming our 500/600 cals throughout the day. Is this not correct?

Yes, thanks very much HB, that does help. I look forward to comparing notes with you in a few months’ time as we started at the same time – along with several others now in their second or third week.

Hello Monday fasters.
Third fast today and doing pretty good but oh so tired. Had a nap around 2.30 after eating around 11.30 just couldn’t keep eyes open. Had milk in coffee just because.

Thanks Tim for asking the ? about miso soup adding towards the 500/600 cals, I too was wondering. Read a post today about the additives E600’s which includes msg in some brands so mine went in bin today. I’ll look for an organic one. Don’t need msg making me even hungrier.
I had to visit osteopath today and very embarrasingly my stomach sounded like a caged lion…lol!!!
Lost 2 kg in first week and feel much better in myself already….yay!!

Hi – Melinda from Goulburn, NSW, Australia. Haven’t weighed myself yet but definitely have more energy and my wedding ring is fitting looser. Happy with the results so far, especially once I realised I could spread my calorie intake across the day (duh!). I was white-knuckling it til about 4pm and received a blessing. A phone call from a friend who is also doing the diet, who explained it to me. I still have a habit of waiting up til midnight then having a few chocolate biscuits. Is this cheating???? Thanks.

Hi Thinatlast and Melinda. Re not doing it properly i.e. fudging a bit here and there, some of the Fems who post have quaint ideas! but the point is that it works for them and lets face it thats what counts.
The general opinion seem to be that one can have Black coffee and Tea and an oxo cube etc. As I am now below my target weight I do allow myself 100ml milk in my coffee on one of my 2 FDs I think I would have to agree that I was fudging BUT only a little bit.

Zoedog its a great mob here. Can I suggest if you already haven’t done so read the book and the FAQ at the top of this page they are fund of info.
To help you out I suggest you send me your supply of choc biscuits then you won’t be cheating, but only if they are double coated 🙂

Cheers,
TIm.

Hi Tim and all your mates
You are doing a great job supporting all the newbies. On you, mate!
We are off travelling the wide brown land, so I rarely get a chance to read the SHs at the moment.
I agree utterly with Tim folk. Make sure you read Michael’s books. You need to understand the reasons for this way of eating (woe) and how to do it. It is much more than a weight loss diet. It actually allows your body a chance to heal itself. Lots of us who have been on it for a while have found significant health improvements (diabetes, blood pressure, IBS etc) The weight loss is fabulous and allows massive increases in exercise, but it is not a short term diet it is a way of life (WOL).
Most of us find we can relax a fair bit with our normal food intake on non fast days once we have reached our goal weight, but we need to continue two fasts a week for life. The fast involves 1/4 or less of your daily calorie needs. It is preferable to limit your eating of these calories to one or two “meals” over a 36 hour period, once you are used to it. This gives the body plenty of down time to heal.
This fasting really does work. All the best. PVE 🙂

Whoever mentioned the Best diet in the world, i think its sounds about the same as the CSIRO total wellbeing diet and i would say that the Danish lot are years behind going on what was said in that article. Tehre’s nothing said about fat which turns out not to be as bad as we’ve been told for many years in fact low fat may actually be bad. Yes i agree low GI carbs are great and the best carbs, not the least because they are often so high in fibre. From watching that show on catalyst the other night, assuming the science is correct, (it was certainly more convincing than the arguments for the 5:2 diet in terms of health and longevity) then fibre is going to be latest great food and it really does sound more like a superfood than any other so-called superfood i’ve ever heard talk about. Although of course fibre is not a food but a component of food and nothing would ever induce me to take a fibre pill.

For those who missed it watch catalyst – gut reaction shows 1 and 2 on you tube or iview. The crux of the matter is that fibre is broken down into short chain fatty acids called acetate which circulates throughout the body and works at preventing and curing a great variety of diseases and seems to do a pretty good job as well. So unlike many things, it does seem the more fibre you can eat the better. Given that african tribe exemplified in the show eats between 50 and 200grams of fibre a day and is obviously very healthy. Yes that’s a huge amount of fibre. But i’m willing to try to eat 50g per day if i could figure out how to do it. Maybe it would involve getting all my protein from vegetable matter only and not dairy. I must look into that. The tribe is the Hunza tribe.

ON the other hand, the longevity claims of the fasting diet are not by any means clear cut. There is no scientific consensus on these matters and some say you need to live the fasting diet from youth to get the benefits. Consider especially that it takes 12 hours just to turn the healing gene on/off as the case may be. So to get the benefit of it, you must then do a few more hours of fasting to give it time to do some work.

So i’m just doing the fasting diet for weightloss and if it happens to have other benefits, great. IT seems like a pretty easy way to maintain a low body weight. Though i must say i blew it last night. At 11.35 after a stupid second glass of wine, my judgement was destroyed and i wanted to eat stuff. I should have gone to bed hours before that but i had been in tired in the morning and slept. So my latest tip on that score is don’t ever sleep too much during the day on a fast. I have slept to good effect during the day but you’ve still got to go to bed early in the evening. And don’t ever have more than one glass of wine. Although i’m sure none of you would dream of even taking a sip in the first place.

Anyway so now i’m going to leave my next fast until next Saturday and do the two together which i think i prefer. But i also think that while its easy to be strong in the beginning of doing this diet, its may be harder for someone us as we go along.

What i do know though is that, i have understood that there’s nothing like a fast to kick start a diet. It changes your appetite, in a good way.

Hi,
Started Aug 18th. Using Monday & Thursday’s for my Fast days.
3rd Fast day today. Had one 500 cal meal for supper + loads of water all day. No Vino =(
Feeling pretty good. Anyone else on their 2nd week?
Well off to put the kettle on! =)

Hi Judy
Totally agree, although most of us do 36 hours…after dinner until breakfast. So, eat a normal dinner, eat only 1/4 of your TDEE (or less) the next day, go to bed and eat a normal breakfast when you wake up.
The 2pm to 2pm “fast” is not at all the same. I don’t know why they included it, either. PVE

Hi all,
great to read all your posts, very affirmative and informative, thanks so much!
It seems there are a few of us newbies out there, hi from Canberra.
Hope those of you in dry areas got some good rain too last night. It poured here.
Thanks to the experienced fasters (oldies doesn’t sound so good!) for the support and answers.
My second fast day went well, I think fasting on a work day is possibly easier for me cause I don’t have so much time to eat or think about food.
Will do it again on Friday and hope it won’t be too hard to have a meagre dinner at my sister’s.
I finally bought some scales yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see lower numbers than expected. Unfortunately I didn’t have scales to weigh myself before I began, so don’t know my original weight, but 2 months ago it was at least 2kg higher!
This morning I weighed a further kilo less, but I imagine that was at least in some part due to fluid retention, as my waist was 3cm smaller too.
Whatever, I’m very happy to be below 80kg for the first time in years!!
I guess my efforts before I started had paid off a bit too, and as many others have said, in between my fast days I ate less and more consciously too.
So now I’m really motivated!
I have felt pretty shoddy, though that might also be the time of month, and had difficulty sleeping with a grumbling tummy, am hoping it will get better.
Keep up the good work and have a lovely day,
Sue

Hi Nicki,
thanks for the welcome and comments.
I have done a lot of reading and saw the original show. As the bookshop didn’t have Mosley’s book I bought Kate Harrison’s 5:2 diet, which I found very user-friendly. I liked the personal touch with her diary entries and quotes from the fb 5:2 group she started, and the fact that she gave the basic facts and provided references (including of course, Mosley himself, and the BBC show, which was the inspiration for her to give it a try), for those who wanted to dig deeper into the scientific background.
Plan to borrow The Fast Diet from a friend (when she can bear to part with it!)
Sue

Suetee: You might be able to download the ‘Fast Diet’ as an ebook from your library in the meantime. I got that as well as Mosley’s ‘Fast Exercise’ from mine.

Dublin: yes, we’re also on our 2nd week, started on 18 August.

I think it would be great if forum users’ personal profiles included date commenced, (we could see at a glance who are our gurus and who’s just starting with us), geographical location and updates like weight loss to date along with some of the medical benefits that users have experienced. One of the things that I found very encouraging was reading forum entries from people who’ve adopted it as a WOL, some of whom have now been doing it for years. It’s impractical to read all the entries so, over time, some of the interesting things about people on these pages just get lost in space. Of course, some people might prefer to remain completely anonymous.

Strangely, I find I’m actually looking forward to our fast day tomorrow. A bit weird maybe but I think I like the security of knowing what to expect and what I can eat. And I’m even more excited about weigh-in day on Thursday. I just want to hurry the whole thing along and wish I’d started when I first heard about it last year.