Hi I am a 60 year old female and have just started the 5:2 diet. Any help with my diet as I am a 90% vegan I do eat some cheeses such as feta and halouni so foods are very limited, I also have gerd which is a reflux problem so my diet is very again limited, mostly I eat salad and stir fried vegies, I would say my problem is that I don’t eat regularly as I can eat only one meal a day but do I eat then can’t stop so very imbalanced, find it hard to eat 3 meals and snacks a day but hopefully know am onto it so let the diet begin. Good to join you all. 🙂

Welcome Debbie. I am a vegetarian and have no problem with 5.2 way of life.
I make and freeze Vegan Spaghetti Bolognese at 100cal you can add Splenda noodles if you want. It is quick to make.Taste delicious. I also eat veggie soups. On a different fast day I might have stirfry with satay tofu. I usually don’t go over 400 cal. I also have green tea and water during the day.I fast Mondays and Thursdays.
Enjoy VM

Hi all, I really enjoyed all the posts over the past few days. Discovered that plumber’s a poet and Charlie’s a female. Sounds like you’re keeping busy on the land. Lovely to grow your own food.

Moulin, I find I tend to visit this page more when I need a bit of group support – so don’t be a stranger when you’re finding things hard. The only thing I could find wrong with your intake was the diet tonic with your G&T. Now that I couldn’t deal with. Schweppes full strength tonic water or nothing at all! Just joshing. Since we have to endure 40C+ days on occasion throughout summer here in the west, I do all the same exercise things but just get up earlier and get home before it gets so hot.

prc46: Happy Anniversary and a toast to you for that as well as your marvellous charity work. I join IHAW in saying that it is so heartwarming to learn of the good things people do in our world when there are so many seemingly out to destroy it.

kix1973: It seems that Mon and Thurs are the popular and sensible days (or you could buck the trend and join me on Sun and Weds).

Have a great week everyone.

G’day – two of us here in Melbourne just starting on this diet. Had our blood taken today for the basic testing (GP is as interested as we are to see how things progress). We had to fast overnight anyway for the blood tests so thought we may as well start from today.

We each had 2 small boiled eggs for a late post-test breakfast and had a day out so had pre-planned the type and size of Boost Juice smoothie to have later in the day that would give us maximum protein without going over the 500/600cal limit, as we didn’t think decision making at that point was a great idea.

Bit hungry and tired now but we survived! Going to try to jump on the Mon/Thurs bandwagon.

Hi Thinatlast,
You can blame my father for my name, he wanted a boy, so although my mother named me a normal girls name, my dad always called me Charlie. I only got my real name when I was in deep trouble.

Scales were not kind last week, weight stayed the same, just shows that I need two days to fast, and with a work road trip I was only able to fast for one day.

To those of you in the West of this country I feel for the hot weather that you have had that is now coming our way.

Not looking forward to the coming fire season, we are already dry, and expecting 34 degrees on Saturday. I am looking for Autumn and summer hasn’t got here yet.

Enjoy the rest of the week. 🙂

Charlie

Oh dear P!

There are occasional stories of the sewers being blocked by ‘fat-bergs’. I now have a mental image of a ‘fat-PVE’…the fat you and OH have shed, taken human form, and wibble-wobbling in the sewers beneath Aus. Keep the toilet seats down, else ‘she’ may come calling….!

Welcome Star and other first-time fasters.

PVE, just grinning to read that you weigh twice daily – that’s me! After 12 weeks of this WOE, I’m still not used to my weight increasing after the first fast of the week yet going down overall after the second. I am sure I will come to trust it in time. I seem to be losing about 300gms a week now which although slow, is trending in the right direction so I am very happy.

Charlie, before my daughter was born, my Dad tried to get us to choose a masculine name – he suggested Charlotte so she could be known as ‘Charlie’. His reasoning was that people reading her name would assume Charlie was a man and she’d get more credibility and respect in a male-dominated business world. We called her Stephanie.

As for the heat and bush fires, I agree with you – roll on April! Although, in our household, we have a bit of a weird relationship with bush fires as OH makes a living from aerial fire fighting.

Well, I think my 30gm oats have expanded to a quantity that almost resembles a serving so I will sign off now to enjoy my breakfast.

Hi Charlie

Congratulations, wow, 25 kg in a year. Woohoo! Happy Birthday and fantastically well done. Cheers, Bay 🙂

Happy birthday, my hero farmer girl! Brilliant work and results Charlie!

Same with you purple! Maintaining great health for six months is wonderful, and will pay great dividends.

You both deserve a big loud round of applause and a huge hug for being not only fantastic, but achieving so much!

Suffering from very sore eyes at the moment, so can’t read and reply as usual.
Have a good trip Charlie. Happy fasting Thursday people. P 🙂

Take care of your eyes, Purple. See you when you feel better. 🙂 Bay

Hello everyone, I’m a 62yrs young living in Coffs Harbour. I just finished my 2nd day. Going really great. Had my gallbladder out 3 weeks ago and lost a bit of weight so thought I would continue on. Weighed 98kg before op, down to 95kg after 7 days in hospital. Did 5:2 last Mon & this Thur, now 93.3. Couple of questions, sorry if they have been asked before. In the 5:2 book it says that you should fast for 12hrs, so if I had breakfast I couldn’t have anything until tea? Also I find it hard to sleep on my fast days, I keep thinking about what I’m going to have the next day for breakfast. Looking forward to getting healthy. Good luck to all.

we really do need a like button on here. I forget who posted what.

Hi there
Just finished my second week. Doing the Monday/Thursday routine, as most seem to do. I tend to manage on tea/coffee for the mornings and eat at lunch time, then again at dinnner time and easily sticking to the 500cal.
Happy to report that this morning’s weigh in saw me down 3.7kg (since start) and 19cm off my waist.
And the best part…. on my off days, Im just eating what I normally eat, not even thinking about it, or calorie counting, or stressing… feeling fantastic. No more “dieting” for me ever again. Yippeeeeee!!!
Have a fab day everyone

Hi bayleafoz,
The 19cm is also in two weeks. 11cm off the hips too. In fairness, I should say that I have a heck of a lot to lose, almost 40kg, so I think my losses will be quicker at first than say someone who only needs to lose 10 or less kg.
It was great yesterday having to keep pulling up a pair of new pants that I bought for my birthday mid-October, that were, shall we say, very snug at the time. 😉

Thankyou Bayleafoz will try your suggestions. Cheers

Hi Caylene (I think! It’s hard to keep track of who’s saying what when there’s a plethora of posts) I’m on my tenth week now and struggled with the non-sleeping but doesn’t seem an issue anymore.. As Bay said, on fast days I tend to have my meal around 7-8pm and then go to bed .. Lately I’ve been making sure i have enough cals left to I have some warm milk with honey before bed.. I think this helps .. Just having strawberries and some miso soup earlier in the day with some black coffee (and I’m having a run of good brand mineral water! atm) cheers everyone, you’re doing so well!

Welcome all newbies. Thanks for the encouragement Bay and Nicky (and well done, I’m in awe of you both). You’re right, since this is a change for life, it doesn’t matter how slowly we shrink, in fact I believe less dramatic changes are healthier for the body.

Caylene, I too found it hard going to sleep feeling hungry so, since my first week, I have ‘banked’ a hard boiled egg on a fast day. 90 cals and it really sticks to your ribs as your grandmother would have said. I usually have this around 8pm and, by 9pm, I’m asleep as I find I get very tired early on fast days – which is good as I get a decent night’s sleep. On a fast day when eggs form the ‘dinner’ such as asparagus tortilla (259 cals), I reserve half a banana (55 cals) instead. It just takes the edge off. You can still dream of breakfast which, by now, is well in sight!

As for the 12 hour fast period, I also found this confusing at first but what I’ve gathered over the past 12 weeks from Michael’s FAQ at the top of this page, re-reading the book a couple of times, and from insight shared by long-time fasters on here is that it doesn’t matter how you divide your 500/600 cals but there may some anecdotal evidence that longer fasting between meals may be beneficial. So, you could go as long as possible before having the first thing on the fast day; break it up into several small intakes during the day or divide the cals between breakfast and dinner. My neighbour has all her cals at breakfast and nothing else all day – don’t know how she manages that! Whatever works for you.

Oh and Happy Birthday Charlie!

Well said, thinatlast.

Congrats to you too. I agree re fasting as long as possible without food. However I note that it is easier after a few weeks of this WOL to lengthen the fasting time. I think the trick at the beginning is to learn NOT to graze. No nibbles between meals. And to drink lots of water.

At the very beginning of this WOL, I spread my food over 3 small meals and now I’m down to two meals on a fast day. Just black tea or coffee in the morning, then soup or tuna or egg salad for lunch/ brunch. Then dinner of lean protein and steamed green vegetables around 7.30 pm. In bed by 9 pm.

All the while making sure to drink my two litres of water. I have a measuring bottle for my water. Otherwise I’m inclined to fudge. 😉 and I keep busy on fast days. Gardening, walking, scrubbing the house.

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Hi everyone, and welcome to all the new fasters. It has been a while since I have posted as I had a bit of a forced absence from fasting. I developed bronchitis and I really didn’t want to add any more stress to my body. Thankfully the bronchitis is now pretty much gone, and I am now ready to start back with the fasting. I’ll start again on Monday. However, despite not fasting I have still lost a smidge more weight and am staying stable. Not sure whether it is all the coughing or whether it is lessons learned that is the cause of the weight loss, but I’m pretty happy with the progress. I never had a huge amount to lose, only 8kg but I’ve achieved half of that already. Now I just need to get fit.
HB 🙂

Hi Charlie

Type the symbol for colon : then lol, then the symbol for colon : then space

Do not leave any spaces between the colon, lol and colon. 😆

If you type two spaces after the colon, you will get a full stop. The full stop (or any other form of punctuation) will stop the animated face from appearing.

For a wink you type : then the word wink, then : and a single space. 😉

Cheers, Bay

Welcome Monica. I too had to learn how to handle the feast days in the first few weeks. We all have to work out what works best for us, so well done (especially declining pizza when people around you are having it). I still go off the rails sometimes.

Charlie, I’d like to start changing my fast days to your type of regime. When you say you save all your cals until the evening meal, would sipping on herbal teas throughout the day be contrary to that? I just can’t handle black tea or coffee. I bought lots of different flavoured Twinings herbal teas as a little taste bud treat on fast days. The packets state 20 cals per teabag which I can see could add up quickly, so I re-cycle one bag for 2 or 3 cups during the day.

Now to try bay’s tutorial: 😆

Happy Belated birthday Charlie, I couldn’t remember whose birthday it was on Friday.
I have the twinnings lemon and ginger herbal infusion tea. they are 8 kj’s according to my fitness pal app on my phone. Which is great I find for tracking how much I eat on any day.

Welcome to the new people. I Have just started last week only having my herbal tea for breakfast as well as three glasses of h2o.Then some wonton soup for lunch and veges or salad and some grilled chicken. I had a head cold and found fasting quiet easy but I think am getting used to it. Also on non fast days I am not craving the high carb food like I used to. Although did have wine chocolate and cake yesterday, but didn’t eat until the evening.
I hope I continue to loose steadily.
Wow Ozzylass 19cm off your waist!!! Way to go.
Enjoy your week everyone and happy fasting for all those tomorrow (including me).
Jane

Hi Ihaw
I KNEW you were that belly dancer in Tim’s video! I can just see you flaunting your tummy tat!
I wonder how poor Tim is getting on? It’s frustrating when we lose touch with someone we have become fond of.
Did my back in during the weekend lifting a grandchild awkwardly. I probably need you ihaw to give me some back work!
Thanks Nicky, my eyes are improving, but I will have to switch off again after this post 🙁
For the newies:
I have been on 5:2 for 19 months. I maintain by doing a really good fast on Mondays…24 hours with no food, then a salad with a bit of fish. Sometimes have a dessertspoon of yoghurt or a tiny veg pattie (21 cals) to settle my tum before sleep. On Thursdays I start off with the best intentions, but somehow rarely make the 24 mark. I tell myself…’make it to 12′, then extend it ‘make it to 2’ etc. Thursday fasts usually end up as two small eating periods…about 3, a small salad and at 7, the usual fast dinner with OH at night. As I’ve been at goal since last April, I find this works for me. I don’t stress if I can’t make it, but try to have 2 fasts a week still as it keeps me on track and seems to stop me making inappropriate choices on feed days.
All the best fasting today SHs. P

Great insights IHAW, PVE. Too bad we can’t devise a year book like our children have in year 12 where they show all the baby photos & you’ve to match who’s who. It would be fun to try and match the new bodies with the forum posts. Speaking of the tattoo, what have you all done with your excess skin? There must be miles of it.

Charlie & bird, I sipped on Twinings pomegranate and cranberry tea yesterday and, as it was 36C, decided to put it over ice. Very refreshing. I didn’t make it past 11.30am to have my first feeding but it’s a start. Strange weather here in Perth; today we’re enjoying a thunder and lightning storm – with very little rain.

I’ve experienced an annoying plateau for the past couple of weeks. I haven’t lost faith. I have a suspicion that bread and me don’t mix. I like Nicky’s idea of the ‘cauliflower’ rice. Stupid question – is it raw when you blend it?

Happy fasting day everyone 😆