Brad Pilon is into weight lifting. His fasting is tightly coupled with heavy exercise. I don’t remember ever reading about it being a 5:2 plan, and I’ve read most of his books. He just doesn’t like fasting more than 24 hours. There are also the OMAD (One Meal A Day) fasters that typically limit their calories to around 1400 per day. Often these people fast everyday and tend to avoid exercise. Of coarse there are wide variations in what people do.

I personally see a few ways of doing 5:2.

1) Eating up to 500 (or even 800) calories on FDs and then being restrictive on NFDs. Here calorie restriction is accounting for the bulk of the work but hopefully the fasting keeps the metabolism up.

2) Doing a water fast for 36+ hours on FDs and just eating normally on NFDs. Here one is depending more on hormone levels to get rid of the fat. Often this can be a slower but possibly more profound way to loss the fat because one is pushing the body is to using fat over sugar.

3) Eat a ketogenic diet on NFDs and then do true water fast on FDs. This is probably the fastest way to burn the fat, however there could be negatives long term from the higher fat/protein consumption. (That is highly debatable.)

I’m sure one could come up with more variations, however the key is there is roughly 36+ hours of fasting twice a week. Night, fasting day and night is the typical 5:2 fasting approach. If you only go 24 hours and eat a normal to large meal that isn’t 5:2 the way it is practice here.

Hi Rajiv, that sounds like a typical FD many practice here. The key is to then only eat up to your TDEE on non-fast days. However determining what your TDEE really is can be a bit of an art.

Your protein intake sounds more like a body builder level. Maybe that is what you are doing. It is also a common trick to help cut fat since protein requires more energy to digest. I take it that you are trying to build lean body mass. In that case the scale might not be a friendly as a measuring tape!