Hello Southern Hemispherites!!

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Neilithicman

1:55 am
17 Sep 24
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Morning all.

Yesterday was a lot better than the weekend. I managed to keep myself to a flat white during the day, then a bowl of pumpkin soup, a handful of walnuts, and a handful of roasted chickpeas for dinner. Total of around 780 calories. So far so good today, I’ve just had a flat white and a couple of snacka balls for a total of 200 calories, I’m going to have a small avocado for a late lunch for another 200 calories. If I can keep my dinner to under 400 calories then hopefully that will be enough to counter the excess sugar and carbs I ate in the weekend. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow morning.

It’s still cold. It was so cold this morning that I got an icecream headache riding my bike down the hill on the way to work, and it’s currently snowing down at sea level. I’m hoping it clears away by the end of the day when I’m due to ride home.

Neilithicman

10:12 pm
17 Sep 24
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Looks like it’s just me here at the moment, well I’ll talk at you for a while.

My back-to-back fasts were enough to counter my weekend carb-a-thon. I saw my 8th consecutive week of losses, down 300g. It may be just a small loss. But after my weekend, I’m happy to see any loss on the scale. Total now is 4.6 kilograms down in 8 weeks. If I keep this average of around 600g a week, then I should see another 8-9 kilos gone by the end of the year.

Have a good one everyone

Quacka

12:06 am
18 Sep 24
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Good Morning Everyone

That’s great Neil! FD’s are such a good way to undo the damage done from a big weekend.

This is my third week of FD’s (two per week) and I am super happy with the results so far. After my first FD for the week on Monday, yesterday morning I weighed in at 78.5 kg (a loss of 4kg in just over two weeks). I haven’t been in this weight range since 2020. I am fasting today and can’t wait to see what my weight will be tomorrow!

The only downside is my reflux is giving me a bit of hell at the moment so I am going to trial a few things to try and fix that. Firstly I am going to give up coffee. it’s no big deal for me as I prefer tea anyway (hi LJ). I only have one coffee per day and only when I am working. At home I drink tea. Since I’ve started fasting I have been having long black’s so I don’t waste calories in my coffee. Before fasting I was having almond milk. A medium almond milk coffee is about 75 calories, not worth it for me on FD’s. I researched a little bit last night and there were suggestions to eat something so that the stomach is not empty. I thought celery would be good because it is crunchy and I like it. I also read that leafy greens are good. Apparently when there is food in the stomach the oesophageal sphincter closes which helps keep the acid in. So obviously when there isn’t food, that sphincter is open and allows the acid and pepsin gases to rise in the oesophagus. I don’t have that much acid coming up just the lump in my throat and constantly wanting to swallow which I read is due to the gases. Who knows? So today I am armed with some celery, some baby spinach and I will have my instant miso soup for lunch.

As Suzy said in her post earlier this week, we have to make FDs work for us. There is no reason that I have to go all day without eating as long as I stay in my calorie range. I just prefer to go as long as possible so that I have more calories available for dinner as I still try and eat a fairly normal dinner.

Well I’m on a FD today so I will be checking in here again often. Hope those of us fasting have a nice easy one and hope everyone else has a lovely day too xx

Cinque

1:31 am
18 Sep 24
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Hello everyone,

I had my gorgeous granddaughter stay overnight on Friday which was lovely but hard work (ADHD and her concentration span was about 90 seconds), so I am still recovering. I have been reading posts though, and I will do a bit of answering while I am waiting for homehelp (so late I am worried they cancelled today and haven’t let me know)

Most important things first:
OMG Gday! Cafes closed on the weekend! What are they thinking?
And how sad if visiting one isn’t a lovely experience.

Also important, how everyone is going with the old 5:2

Cali I do so hope your weight stops bouncing around confusedly. Maybe a bit less salt and some psyllium husks will do the trick. It would be so nice if you had a long run of easy fast days, but such good reminders that that hunger comes and goes and that we can eat tomorrow.

Best wishes too with all your strategies for better sleep. Isn’t sleep precious. Even more precious than a full caffeine coffee.

Ha, I can imagine a rattlesnake thinking a croc would be a good shoe to curl up in.

Cinque

2:03 am
18 Sep 24
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Back again with a cup of tea.
Still no homehelp. I’ll do another post and then ring the council to find out what has happened.

Suzy Q, it is so good reading your posts and seeing you triumph against difficult fast days, and finding things out about how your body reacts to hunger and fullness and sugar after fast days!
(I have had to cut out sugar/sugary things altogether because of my twin horrible reactions: one is it triggers binge eating and the other is I feel absolutely poisoned).

Hooray for new habits. It is such a nice sideline of 5:2 that it leads to reassessing so many of our habits and giving us the space to tweak or change them.

Hello Thin, what an excellent summary of managing difficult fast days.
You are such a brilliant ambassador for fasting that sometimes I presume you have nailed non fast days too. So it was a good reminder you gave of what an ongoing tricky business that is. Sending good wishes for these NFDs.

Neil, Yikes, a 5 birthday celebration when you are still working on movie nights.
And a blast of cold weather on top of it!
Life does like to throw us challenges!

A big woot! and lots of congratulations for that lovely loss, and that lovely trajectory of losing that weight you do not need.

Cinque

4:38 am
18 Sep 24
Permalink

Hello again,
Homehelp turned up nicely at the end of the last sentence 😀
They had reorganised her appointments for the morning but hadn’t thought to let me know. Lovely clean home!

LJoyce, impressive! Big congratulations. Ooh your poor knee. A friend of mine has recently had a partial knee reconstruction and what a long hard road it is healing from it. Better than the terrible arthritis ofcourse, but still, you have all my sympathy for having to face it again. Good luck avoiding it as long as you can.

Best wishes to your pot of tea!

Neilithicman

11:05 pm
18 Sep 24
Permalink

Morning all

I had a reasonable eating day yesterday, I ate around 2100 calories. But I woke up this morning feeling really full, so I skipped breakfast. I’m still not feeling hungry an hour or so into work. I might avoid eating until I actually feel hungry today.

Quacka, sorry to hear your reflux is playing up. I find these days that when I have an extended fast, that I get really bad acid stomach that I never really used to get. I used to snack on celery and cucumber sticks when I was doing the fast 800, it’s good for staving off the hunger pangs. Congrats on the loss, 4kg in 2 weeks is an awesome amount.

Cinque, hooray that the home help showed up. I’m (hopefully) still a few years away from having grandies, I’m in the sweet spot where my kids have got over their hyper stage, and I tire them out rather than the other way around when we go out for walks.

Well, I hope everyone else is good, and I’ll catch up with you later

Cinque

1:28 am
19 Sep 24
Permalink

Hello again,

I meant to write one more post yesterday, but ran out of concentration.

Lovely to see your post this morning Neil. It was a relief when home help turned up!

Haha yes, I hope you get some easy years before grandchildren start. But omg it is fun when they do. So much delight and so much less responsibility. 😀

Quacka, I missed responding to your post and wanted to as I have so much sympathy that 5:2 has brought reflux along with it. Sooo frustrating.

My understanding is that a healthy lower esophageal sphincter only opens to let food down or vomit up. It isn’t perfect, so in most people a little stomach acid and salts and pepsin etc come up at times, but the clever body heals it without us even noticing.

For someone with a leaky LES the stomach acids etc come up more often and can inflame the esophagus. They are most likely to come up when the stomach is working to digest food, because that is when the stomach is producing acid. Generally, an empty stomach isn’t making much acid.

However, I found (and I know from the forums I have been on that I am not alone) that if I get too hungry, I start getting reflux. The small amount of acid is building up and maybe increasing in anticipation of a meal. And my leaky LES is letting it through. I think that might fit more with your research.

If my esophagus has become inflamed (and at the moment it is the most inflamed it has been since I was diagnosed early last year) I have to do a tricky balance between trying to eat as little as possible (because any eating irritates it further) and eating often enough to use up the acid it is making (and to stop me starving!).

On the information I have, we need to be eating small meals as far apart as we can. Soft foods, eaten slowly, chewing well so they are not abrasive on our poor inflamed esophagus.

I also try never to stretch my stomach with big meals. They reckon the stomach is like a beach ball that isn’t blown up and you can fit in an amount of food about the size of your fisted hand before it starts having to stretch.

(Every time I eat even just a bit too big meals my esophagus gets inflamed again. I am learning!) (And I have to sleep with the head of my bed raised.)

Such a balance: small meals as far apart as possible, but not so far apart that you get too much acid gathering in your stomach. I can manage three hours between mine, so I have four small meals a day.
But I think some people can’t even do three hours.

Our esophagus heals best when nothing is going down or up, but we have to eat and our stomachs do make acid, sigh. So we can only keep managing it as best we can.

Oops couldn’t work out how to say all this more concisely. I quite understand your situation may be very different to mine, so no problem if you stopped reading.

But sending all good wishes that you can heal quickly.