I have only 2.2 pounds/1kg to go to goal!!!!

I only know a little about insulin resistance but it think patience is essential so make commitment a big deal for yourself. I haven’t got IR but i have made commitment a big deal for myself anyway and its paid off.

Lowering your carbs will also help. I have found around 100 to be a sweet spot. As it keeps hunger at bay while you get the benefit of still being able to eat a wide variety of foods. I am almost tempted to go and buy some keto testers to see if i am actually making ketones or not? Given fast days i think its quite possible.

GEt a pedometer Lucinda. I haven’t had mine long. Its a cheapy but a good. Only $30 from dick smith and after only about a week i have found an easy way to get my steps up around 10000. If you’ve got a lot of weight to lose and have sore knees and back issues, then 10000 might be far too many steps but you could make moderate increases.

Here’s my special trick for getting my steps up. I have a sticky on my desk top and list 5 tasks to do everyday. These are usually things i have been neglecting and not typical of my day as it was. Because i want those tasks accomplished as well as to increase my steps i am doubly motivated. Before i got my pedo, i tended to spend most of my day sitting at my computer and had motivation issues about nearly everything else.

Some days if i haven’t got to 10000, and am not tired and still motivated, i will step outside the door, calculate how many steps i have to take in one direction so that by the time i’m home i’ve reached goal. the benefit of this is that by the time i go to bed, i’ve done even more than my goal.

here’s an example

TITLE:Day 2. Monday 15 September 2014 – a light day because i have to be out for half of it
I list the categories and jobs here:

Garden clean up – check on the mangosteen, week and cover it up properly. Give it a big drink- failed to cover it up.

Then I move items from the top to do list to this new DONE list as i do them throughout the day. If i were to leave them til the end of the day i might not get so much done. and the whole things serves as a bit of a diary as i add other non active jobs to this list as well. Like planning my trip for next and cleaning up my computer files.

My van clean up – put something away that’s lying around in the garden DONE moved some pipe, watered, took out some clothes to throw out and use, and some books and bits.
Dad’s house clean up – something in the bed area – DONE removed the newspapers to store in the shed for the garden
Jane’s house clean up – tidy up some stuff – DONE put some fabric away.

Well, my fist week over. Happy to say i’m still in there. I lost 1.5 by my weigh day which I’m really really happy with! I’ve cut back a lot on the wine too, which is a must . Discovered a very nice long life juice drink from Coles ,Golden Circle %50 less sugar Lemonade . It only has 5gm sugar. And it’s not artificial this that and the other. It actually looks like white wine in the glass! So you can have a pretend “happy hour”. Enjoying a miso soup right now, and have some raspberries defrosting to have soon with some home made yoghurt. I love Hansells greek , it is sooo creamy smooth and yummmm. Well, have a good one all, cheers, Linda.

Oops… that’s Pattience!

I like the sachets of ‘hikari brand’ miso, which is available from both Coles and Woolies. It’s cheap,12 for around $2 or $3 and you just add water, it comes out to about 28 calories per serve, and isn’t too salty. It’s great for warming you up and is more filling than tea or coffee.

Good Health Magazine this month has a a supplement for fasting days called 22 recipes for your 500 cal fasting days. I’ve had a browse through and there are some delicious looking things.

I’VE WORKED OUT WHAT CAUSED MY PLATEAU FOLLOWED BY WEIGHT GAIN!!!!

I easily lost 7 kg in 6 weeks. Then one week I noticed I hadn’t dropped any weight. No probs – prob just a bad weigh in. Nope. The second week I was up about 1 kg. Third week up another 3kg. WTF!!!!

On Sat night I realised that the ONLY thing that had changed was that I started drinking 1-3 litres a day of diet cordial. So as of then I haven’t had any artificial sweeteners. Today is the end of 2 back to back fast days and I’m down from 71.3 to 67.3!!!!! Can’t wait to weigh in tomorrow.

DISCLAIMER: I know some people consume heaps of artificial sweeteners and it doesn’t effect their weight loss progress.

Hi Southern Fasting Pals,
Another successful fast day today. Spent the day mustering cattle. We brought in all the five to six month old calves and gave them two different vaccinations. Then sorted out the bull calves that we had not castrated and from 12 young bulls, tonight we now have six. Culled out the others due to them being under expectations as future stud sires.
Have gone back to how I used to do each day and I am back flying, small piece fruit for breakfast, another for lunch, with lots of water and green tea, then fish and salad for dinner. This gives me a daily amount of around 400 cals.
Have a great week everyone 🙂
Charlie.

Hi to all! Just joined group. It’s taken my 12 months to lose 12 kilos on my own…very slow but at least they’ve not crept back! Saw the Micheal Mosely doco on telly and thought it all made sense, so here I am. Did my first fast b2b last Tues/Wed and managed to loose 1.7kg,hopefully all actual weight as I was drinking 2 or more liters of water a day,so looking forward to tomorrow and another b2b fasting. Not sure how this time will go, as I have my 3 kids home for school holidays,but planning to keep us all busy at the beach for most of the day to distract myself and burn off some cals!
Even though I’ve managed to just creep in to a normal BMI, it’s still on the high end at 25.4,so I’d like to lose another 6 kgs to get down to 60,more would be a bonus! Hope this helps get my bad cholesterol down as it’s slightly up from previous blood test,but still in normal range. I also suffer from trigeminal neuralgia (it’s a numbness/borderline pain down the left side of my face- like when you notice your foot’s gone to sleep and then the blood is just about to rush back and you get that pain) and I’ve noticed that the less sugar in my diet the better it is,so hope to have some relief on that too.

Well, that’s me really. Love reading all your handy hints and encouraging words,hope I can offer the same for you all 🙂

I’m down 500gm to 66.8!!!!

Thank you everyone for celebrating with me. I’m so grateful for the support of this forum ((HUG)).

Pattience – where do you buy miso paste from?

Charlie – I’m so glad you’re going so well. It’s so rewarding to see weight loss. I’m sure sll the work you do on the farm in a fasted state really helps.

BayLeaf – I used to be able to lose weight while consuming heaps of diet soda but I think my body must have reached a tipping point where it became overloaded with the toxins & it tripped something genetically.

Kathryn – Welcome! Congratulations on a 1.7kg weight loss!! That’s awesome! You’ll love this WOE (way of eating). I’m so glad for you that you had immediate success. It makes it so much easier to do fast days when you KNOW it works.

IHAW – Happy dance! Happy dance! Thank you for your joyful support x. I agree it is v scary what research has shown about artificial sweeteners and how much of that and sugar is used in our foods.

Have a fabulous day peeps x

Morning SH mates.

Welcome Kathryn – there’s a lot of experience here and after already losing 12kg, I’m sure you can add to the common wealth.

Home from work last night to find OH had been to town for the dentist and had also bought replacement set of scales. Sadly, they seem to indicate that our previous set weighed 2.5kg lighter, so it’s back into the obese BMI range for me 🙁

However, refuse to be upset, unlike many other times, as this WOL is so much more relaxed for me. Like all of us, I KNOW how to do it. The other aspect is that irrespective of the number on the scales, the amount of loss and other health aspects are unchanged.

Second day of b2b. OH’s 70th birthday today but had family lunch on Sunday so no need to change to another FD.

Happy Tuesday all. N

Thanks P

My version of public servantating isn’t so bad. Don’t have to deal with accounts or minutes or other stupid stuff, just play with plants literally and figuratively. Also get to go outside into the garden as often as I want, meetings notwithstanding. N

Hi BigDAD

So well done and what a sensible and sustainable attitude to this WOL.

Like you, for me life’s too short for a permanent dieting prison sentence so I don’t count calories on non FDs, but do eat sensibly MOST of the time 😉 My OH is fit, skinny and healthy, and turned 70 today so I keep things in perspective, as sharing meal times is so much part of our life together.

I lose an average over the long term of about 1kg and 1.4cm from my waist/month and, because I don’t feel deprived, I can do this forever. In addition to gradually losing the flab, other health indicators like BP are also improved.

Keep up the excellent work! N

Hi there can anybody tell me if it is ok to eat predominately granny smith apple on my fast day, I am a little worried about the carb content

It is calorie count that matters primarily on fast days. A GS apple is about 90 cal, so you could have about 5. Might be a bit dull, depends on taste. Certainly a better choice than 3/4 bottle of wine! PVE

Hi Sush

It is good to put variety into your diet on fast days, otherwise you may give up through boredom. I always like to have some protein, such as a poached egg plus spinach, when fasting. That would be the same calories as a Granny Smith apple.

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Hi all, on my second week and had my third fast day yesterday. I have tried different combinations of eating on my fast days and I think what works best for me is putting off eating for as long as I can and then having a late lunch and dinner. I find when I have breakfast it just seems to make me hungrier as the day goes on. I find keeping busy is the key regardless of when you eat. Yesterday I cleaned cupboards out and it was early afternoon before I knew it – yah! Decided Saturday will be my weigh in day and I’m kinda looking forward to it, my jeans are feeling a bit looser by the day.

Thank you to all the lovely warm welcomes 🙂 It’s so great that everyone views 5:2 as a WOL, and it’s flexibility to suit such an divers set of lifestyles, it really takes the pressure off. It’s really motivating reading posts and taking on board all the advise.

bigkahunadad, I loved it when we were adding the extension to our house, as I was too busy chasing tradies, supplies and housewares to shove food down my gob. It was the easiest weight I’ve ever lost.

jenklar I am the same with eating,I put off eating till very late, I find if I start I feel hungrier, which is the exact opposite of what makes sense to me, and I thought I was just a bit weird. Been drinking water all day, I rather enjoy putting in a lemon wedge & mint sprig, and use a large glass and straw, makes me feel like I’m on a holiday! I should buy those little umbrellas.

Today was first day of b2b fast (2nd week). Thought it was going to be a struggle with kids home from school, but thankfully Melbourne is cranking up the heat and we spent the day at Mentone beach. I didn’t really feel too hungry, even through all the kids eating and snacking, and hopefully managed to burn off some cals playing shadow chasey and digging trenches in the sand.

Gonna finish my short black (actually nothing as fancy as that, just a greek coffee) and head in to cook family’s dinner- saving my portion of tonight’s pad thai for tomorrow as kids have declared it’ll be take away night. (finding that I’m more cautious with my choises on non fast days too, hopefully for faster results )
As tigger says TTFN

Chiciata, you must have missed my post. I buy it from Asian food shops. We have one right next to woolworths. Very handy.

Asian food shops are an excellent place to buy any “exotic” foods like chickpeas, beans, spices, nuts asian rices and flours and cold stuffs and obviously all asian things. They are good value. And fun to spend some time in.

Susheng in my opinion, if you want to eat only apples all day you can.

But i think there are better (more rewarding and more nutritious )food choices. I prefer two meals – a meal of steamed then sautéed vegetables and a meal with seafood is typical of what i eat. I also have coffee with milk. And drink black tea or water the rest of the time. Depending on how many apples you eat, this is a bit less carbs than just apples.

Hi IHAW,
For the boys to remain potential stud sires they have to weight at least 275 kg when they are 200 days old. They also need to show good muscle structure on the rear end with a strong line for their double muscle on the rump. They also need to be narrow in the shoulders and wider but not overly wide in the hips. This means that their children should slide out reasonably easily, and not cause calving problems along with them passing on to daughters wide enough hips for them to calve.
Apart from all of this they must have excellent overall confirmation and finally a great temperament, which means they don’t want to kill me every time I get in the paddock or yards with them.
Yes, IHAW there is one Johnny Depp this year, his name is Kieran, named after a very dear former work colleague, and yes they do have lovely brown eyes and long eye lashes, but then I love the all, much better than some people that I have met in this world.
Busy day at off farm work today, but too much food, really hard sitting through hours of strategy etc and not to pick, oh well back to farm work tomorrow, no rich food here, just lots of fruit and veg.
Enjoy the rest of your week peoples 🙂
Charlie

Hiiiiiiiiiii, my first nite on here, I must restart my on personal diary, I have regained 70kgs of 120kgs lost, I’m from NZ, thankyou for letting me write on your blog. I lost the kgs with a group called Big Girls who meet 3 times a week with a personal trainer at our local gym, our gym is not your usual with skinny people, ( I do not blame them at all ) It is from my own choices why I am struggling now, anyway, in this all equiped gym ( genetics gym Manukau ) the big outweigh the small, literally, my original weight was 220kgs, i got down to 112kgs with this group and had 12kgs sugically removed from my stomach that use to sit on my knees. After the surgery 2 years ago i have declined dramatically and I know I need to regain that power I so easily gave up and it was through my sister inlaw in Australia who told me about 5:2 fast diet, her 16yr son started last week and has lost 3kgs, so I am inspired and what ever happens is up to me, so to everyone keep at it, you all are amazing people and I hope to be on here and get this fast started.

Tonia, why are you going to “forcefeed” yourself 1700 calories tomorrow? Just eat 3 normal healthy meals. If you feel full, stop eating. The idea isn’t to stuff yourself on feed days.
I’m amazed you managed 2 b2b fast days in your first week! Make sure you can do this sustainably for the long term. It isn’t a short cut quick fix.
Most of us wake up the morning after a fast and aren’t particularly hungry. But that doesn’t mean keep fasting. Find a natural rhythm of eat and fast that suits you. Be kind to yourself initially, perhaps doing Monday and Thursday for a month and see how that settles. Keep yourself hydrated, especially with a very long fast.
All the best PVE

Marata you don’t need to be so hard on yourself. What i have learnt about carbs and how they affect you when you start getting a tastes for certain types, its gets far beyond will power and so on. You may find it very helpful to watch the tv show called The Men who made us Fat and the The Men who Make us Thin on you tube. We had it here on tele not so long ago. There is also a book called The End of Overeating by Kessler, who deals with the same issue.

The issue is the food industry and how IT has made us so fat. Yes of course we have played a part. But given the food thats around us and its ubiquity, it is very difficult to avoid succumbing to. the book actually address the matter that not everyone falls into this trap. I can’t now remember what he says about that.

But anyway watching and reading these things has made me see that without the food industry being what is is, only a very small minority of people would have achieved the degree of obesity that many have now achieved. And, moreover, they are doing it, if not deliberately, but with a fair degree of awareness of what they are doing and with no regard to the effects since the only thing that concerns them is making money.

So while its good to take responsibility, others also probably have a lot more responsibility. I mean most people with weight problems have tried and tried and tried to address it. The public has not realised, that the food that’s around is a type of poison. The nature of the food makes you need to eat more. And more of the same. It kills your desire for healthy food. It renders healthy food unpalatable.

I’ve just had a glass of wine, i might be a bit tipsy. I’ve been talking such a lot today. So hence, this little rant.

Anyway marante, if you can learn to regard all of that sort of food as poison, you will get over this. Meanwhile, why not start the fast diet.

Oh and i totally forgot to say what i started out with the intention to write. That is ditch the gym personal trainer. Unless you are in the mood for it. I am fond of repeating the mantra i picked up somewhere this year, weightloss is 80% diet, 20% exercise – its certainly been true of my experience too. One book published some time ago actually had all their long term successful weightlossers as people who took up exercise rather later in their journey.

Anway best wishes on your journey.

Pattience, I think another thing I’ve realised about our ever-heavying society is, that most of us who are overweight are overweight because we can be. I went back through all my diaries (many) and recorded all my weights through the past two decades, which I had randomly written down. I found that I really started putting on weight when I ceased running and working my own business (landscaping), and stopped my career to have two more babies. OK a lot of people put on weight after child bearing, but this was more than that. I can be overweight because I don’t have to keep going out to work, doing something physical. My body was quite used to sustaining my weight at a good level, and my level of fitness was also good when I barrowed concrete, dug holes, laid turf, etc. But now I have the luxury of staying at home….. and getting fat. We live in fairly soft times, with lots of food, transport, machinery doing what we used to have to do. So we get fat because we can.

Odd isn’t it? Sometimes hardship can actually do better things for our health than ‘living well’. We now just have to learn to make the best of this better living. We’re so blessed to have been born into these times, this country, but we indulge too much and so it isn’t the blessing it should be. It can be, but we have to choose to make that happen. With this plan, WOL, and each other’s support there’s no reason why we can’t do it.

I ate lunch today on a fast day which is unusual for me. I tried something different (I tend to be a creature of habit when it cimes to the fast days). I had lots of baby spinach leaves, 1 serve of canned tina, added some subflower seeds & a few cashews, sprayed with olive oil, drizzled balsamic vinegar & seasoned with salt & pepper. What I found really interesting is that when I got towards the bottom of the bowk where a lot of the tina had fallen (heavier) I wanted more spinach to even out the tuna. In the past I would’ve felt the salad was overwhelmed by spinach leaves.

So lunch was about 150 cals. I had an apple (90) and for dinner 50gm of strak with heaps of veggies (250) then about 10 strawberries.

I love this WOE 🙂

In addition I did my first go at HIIT. I struggle go believe that doing 10 minutes of exercise 3 x a week can be as effective as the research shows. It goes against my 41 years of conditioning abiut how to exercise fir fat reduction. But I’m excited to see hiw it goes 🙂

Pattience – I keep meaning to tell you how escited I am that you’re sooooooooo close to your gial weight. That us AWESOME! You must feel so good about yourself and life 🙂 ((HUG))

NickyF – the new scales don’t mean you’re carrying any more weight than you were before. They’re just using a different number to represent the weight you are. I totally understand why you’d feel flat. But shake it off & keep going. You’re dong great 🙂

BayLeafOz – what a great idea to have an egg with spinach. Def going to do that. YUM!

Jenklar – I’m the same as you. If I eat breakfast or before noon it just wakes the sleeping dragon of hunger. Some fast days I can get through until 5 when I have dinner. Other days I eat something (around the 150-200 cal mark) around 2ish. What I love about this WOE is that it’s flexible. I live that!

Kathryn E – Greek coffee sounds v fancy to me :). I too love how supportive, insouring & motivatng this thread is. It’s great to have your company on here x

Minnie – Way to go! What a fabulous result from your first week if fasting. Good on you. Isn’t it motivating to see such quick results?

Tonia – Welcome. You’re going to love this WOE

So many more people I want to personalky respind to cause I find you all so inspiring. But it’s late & I have to get some beauty (and weight loss) sleep x