Hi everyone!

Checking in and hope to post more regularly now. I’ve been sick with the flu and the only silver lining is that I lost 10 lbs. in 10 days! Couldn’t eat much at all, so it was a forced fast. But, it’s the jumpstart I needed to keep it going…I don’t even want anything sugary and my appetite seems to be smaller. I’m more mindful of what I’m eating. I don’t recommend this as a way to lose weight, but it did give me a much-needed reset.

I have a birthday this Sunday–my 66th–so it’s a good time to start new, healthy habits!

Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the holiday season!

Ginalee, I’m 68 and have lost 26.4 pounds since starting the 5:2 on May 10th of this year. My thyroid is normal and I’m past menopause. I have eaten about 500 calories on each of two FD per week without fail. I count calories on FD but never count them on NFD, but I usually try to eat mindfully. (Never mind the leftover Halloween candy massacre on 2 separate days or pizza overdoses on some movie and pizza nights.) I try not to bring trigger foods into the house, like Kringle, cakes, chocolate and ice cream. If I do, I try and make sure they’re frozen or out of site. I’ve been known to throw half a chocolate cake outside in the trash when it wouldn’t stop calling out to me by name. I’ve managed 5:2 around many business trips and meals out, usually by scheduling FD’s around them. I eat lots of carbs on NFD but try to eat a lot of protein along with them on FD to keep from feeling hungry. I would say my activity level is: Total Slug. I need to get more exercise. 😁

In the beginning I was losing about 2 pounds per week. After a month or two it went down to about 1 pound per week. There were plateaus, even early on. Some were weeks long and it took a 3rd FD to get off of them. As I’ve gotten closer to my goal, it’s been increasingly hard to lose, but I have. The plan has been very easy to follow and I’m 1.6 pounds from my final goal of 128. I’m 5’5” I plan to make this a lifelong plan to maintain, possibly going to 1 FD per week if I continue to lose. It has never felt like a diet to me. I just wanted you to know that age doesn’t have much to do with it. If I can lose, so can you!

Hi Everyone, hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. CalifDreamer, congratulations on being so close to goal! Know what you mean about having to throw out or freeze treats! Making marzipan, icing and truffles on FDs was hard but it was an extra incentive not to binge! Hopefully you will be able to go to one FD for maintenance – my goal one day too. Northranger hope you have a good birthday. Fasting-me thank you very much for your tips, I will be using them over the coming week. Managed to fit in my 2 FDs before the festivities and will do the same next week. FDs had to be consecutive days unfortunately but was rewarded with a .4kg loss! Now to keep it off with fasting-me’s tips!

Hooray for all of your successes.

Hi Everyone. I’m back and back to IF. I started last year and had some minor success. I was traveling for family business and it got too difficult and I quit. This week I am starting again and am fasting M&W. I did ok this week although I had a glass of wine on my fasting days. That’s difficult for me. Hopefully next fasting days I will be able to do better. I am also dealing with a diagnosis of being pre-diabetic. I am looking at Keto diets but being a vegetarian that gets weird too. Looking forward to interacting here.

Hi all; Initial few days on IF have gone well. I’m 61 and have had menopausal symptoms for years following a total hysterectomy at age 50.
I’m hoping to be successful in my endeavours to lose weight and become fitter. I’ve had 2 fast days which have been more comfortable than I imagined they would be. This evening I took a 40 minute walk with several bursts of fast walking and after only 500 calories found it remarkably easy! Long may it continue. Off to bed now and looking forward to a regular day of tasty food tomorrow.

Roosy, good job as you dip your toe into Fasting. Walking/exercising is a good way to occupy yourself when not eating.
Patiger, working from home must make it difficult to stick to any eating routine, so more power to you. My friend with diabetes was told by her PCP to ditch the red wine and drink only white. But she’s not Fasting. I’m with Binks: ditch the wine on Fast Days. Save that 5oz for Slow Days only. When you hit your target numbers, you can resume the wine. What’s in the protein shake? Might a homemade shake fill the bill? This is your year! Good luck

Still Fasting here in rainy yet snow-covered New Hampshire. There is some stubborn weight that stays on, just as it did in September. Haven’t been below my target weight in days. Will have to track calories for a few days until it works.
Happy Weekend.

Hi, fasters of a golden age,
I am 68, started 4:3 last year, but moving to my country after 27 years of living in China last summer disrupted my efforts. Now I am ready to try again after yo-yoing for 40 years and being on every imaginable diet in the world. Do let me join your group and share my ups and downs with you. Encouragement would be vital! I am starting on Monday, wish me luck!

Bjanna, welcome to our merry band. Good luck with your Fasting on Monday.

Roosy, good job with that 3 pounds. I’m trying to shake 2 pounds that latched on to me in December. I was being so good and then WHAM. Surely it will go away, but the sooner the better.

Jeatherj, congratulations on your compliments! isn’t that nice.

Patiger, Binks: how goes it?

Binks, sorry to hear about your recent loss. You have the right idea: find a reason not to turn your sadness and stress into weight gain. Keep your eye on the big goal and don’t compound grief with more weight.

We haven’t heard from northrancher since before Christmas. how goes it?

Fasting tomorrow!

Hello Ladies. Thanks Binks – I will look into the naked noodles to see if I can find something here. I know everyone is right about the wine – I’ll I can say is I will try. It’s a new week here. I am changing my FD this week to T-Th because today is MLK day here in the US and my family is home from work and I have a seminar to attend on Wednesday. Best to everyone.

0.8kg down in a week. Not enough, but still something. I hope to continue shedding weight, though these days we are visiting the children and it’s mostly wining and dining. I’ll catch up with the diet next week (hopefully), will try to be more patient with myself and enjoy even the smallest weight loss. It’s going to be a long and bumpy road to the slimmer me (sigh…)About the noodles,
I used to order shirataki noodles, which are only 15cal/portion (you can find them in the US, also Skinny pasta).

Hello All,
You don’t need luck but you do need to commit to change what you eat/drink and when. Aim for full fat everything, avoid anything that is processed and avoid sugar. If you are going to have a glass of wine then remember that equates to a large piece of cake.

This is not a diet, it is a new way of life. A change to how you view food and what you eat/drink and how often.

You can’t outrun your fork!

I dived in convinced that it wouldn’t work for me almost 5 years ago. I lost 26lb and 26 inches in the first 8 months and have continued to make changes along the way to improve what I eat and how often. My dear friend has lost 5 stone to date and not only fasts twice a week but also avoids rice, bread, pasta and potatoes…and I do too.

Have a look at Robert Lustig and Jason Fung and see why shakes/fizzy drinks/sweeteners are best avoided and what will help nourish the body while trimming it too.

I started at 52 and now at 57 I have a much better shape and eat far better than when I was 40. So many things that I wished that I had known then. Ho hum.

No luck required Ladies, just make the changes and you will see the body change too.

Greetings to Highland. Stick with us, kid, and you’ll go far. I found it easier to lose weight and keep it off at 65 much easier than at 45 years of age. It will become a lifestyle if you let it.

Wise words, Annette.

Patiger, my ODH likes variety, so we mix up what we eat. On Mondays we have some sort of baked egg [1 egg/person] or an eggless breakfast. For dinner on Monday, seafood or meatless [Feta Nicoise Salad from the Fast Diet Book]. On Thursday, a 3-egg scromelette between the 2 of us — so many different recipes for the fillings. For dinner, meat or poultry, with lots of veg of course. I counted today: I have 50 different recipes for baked eggs. So you see, we plan a general outline, but how we color it in varies from week to week.

How are you doing, binks?

Have fun with the kids, bjana.

Read Michael Mosley’s book and decided post menopause this may be my only hope to shed some kilos. I go to the gym 6 days a week, cardio 3 days resistance training on the other 3. My usual diet is low in carbs and sugar.

Am into my 4th week and have not lost any weight. I am prepared to give it 3 months but am finding it a bit disheartening.

Any words of wisdom?

JamJam, you said what you don’t eat, but what do you eat on a Fast Day? on a Slow Day? Words of wisdom will flow when we know better what your are ingesting.

Mishty, hide the sweets and treats. You’ll know where they are, but hide them. Plan your meals for Fast Days and also for the other days. As for lunch, do you usually eat a large lunch? At home/at desk/ or at a restaurant with colleagues? How many calories do you want to allot for lunch? If you ate bigger lunch than your dinner, it would promote weight loss. But you probably eat dinner with your family, right? At a restaurant, ask for/look for the grilled fish or poultry. Eat the vegetables, not the pasta/rice/bread. Take your own salad dressing or eat the salad naked. If you brown bag it, eat lean protein and some fruit.

I’m in my third week of 5:2 and 50 years old. I lost 2.5lbs the first week. In the second week, I weighed myself the day after a fast day and saw that I had lost another 2.5 lbs, but when I weighed myself on the regular weigh-in day (two days later) I hadn’t lost any since the first week. Is it typical to have no weight loss on any given week? I guess I thought it would be steady progress each week. I wonder if I ate too much on my non-fast days.

Hi Everyone!

I had my annual exam yesterday and all my blood work improved significantly!! My total cholesterol dropped by 45 points and I’m no longer pre-diabetic. I owe this entirely to the 5:2 fasting and changing the way I eat…more (organic) vegetables, fruits, whole grains, chicken & almost no red meat, soda, sugar, starches. I only lost 10 lbs (no exercise), but qualitatively I’ve improved my health. My doctor is the one who recommended the fast diet and it’s a life changer, even without exercise.

I struggled with it over 1 1/2 years, dropped it and bounced back and forth, but the end result was remarkably good. I was surprised with the outcome, because I wasn’t consistent. But, for anyone who is discouraged, hang in there–you don’t have to be perfect. Just keep getting back to it whenever you detour for awhile.

I hope to add exercise into my daily life, because I do think we need to move our bodies to stay healthy at any age, but especially in one’s 60’s. One step at a time!

Northrancher, congrats on the inspiring results! Hope to follow in your tracks, have high blood pressure to fight and a persistent lower back pain, and both should improve with weight loss. Keep up the good work!

Hi Everyone

Congrats to all of you who have lost weight and for those of you who haven’t don’t despair. This is a great health and weightloss way of life. I have lost 9kgs since I started a year ago. Gearing up for year 2 and hope to be around 50kgs in a year’s time, currently 59. I have had occasional weeks of no weightloss, weight gain at Christmas (only 0.7kg – thanks for tips fasting_me), plateaus and far more weeks of steady weightloss. For a little effort I have lost weight and kept it off for the first time in years!! I encourage everyone who is not losing to use home page tools to calculate, bmi, tdee and track for a month what goes in your mouth using an app, you will be surprised at where you spend your calories and once you have a handle on this you are can just calculate fds only. I love annette52’s “you can’t outrun your fork” – classic! Bjanna, 4:3 is probably a good way to go if you want fast results, me I love losing and keeping it off and having some treats on nfds – we are all different. Good luck everyone.

Northrancher: FANTASTIC results!! Hooray! Good words of encouragement for us all.

coco: I just turned 69 and have been doing this Lifestyle for 4+ years. Welcome to our world. You can lose the 10 pounds and be healthier than before AND keep the weight off, too. Start it and stick with it.

RubyRed: great job — especially with keeping the gains low over the holidays.

CSLB: stick with it. Weight goes up and it goes down. As long as over a period of time [1 month] it goes down, you are fine. What you eat of Slow Days does matter, so check the foods you eat and how much of them. That can make a big difference.

Thanks for the support, Fasting_me! I’m sticking with it! I’m changing my days from Tues/Thurs to Mon/Thurs. It might be nice to have two days between fasting.

Dear Coco, we all have our mountains to climb, I do agree that stress is a major contributor, but with the age number going up gets more and more difficult. I have fought my genes and sweet tooth since I was a teenager, piled a dozen kgs during pregnancies and it was somehow OK until my 50s. Then another 5-6kg came out of nowhere with the weight becoming uncontrollable after 60. Let’s try and do it together, this group of young in spirit ladies is very supportive and I do hope I’ll be motivated enough to keep up until the very top of the mountain. I have a dress from my 30s that fits my granddaughter who is 14 and I often look at it and try to imagine how I looked in it. Hope to put away my baggy clothes that I hide in and enjoy the image in the mirror in a couple of years. Keep up your determination, you have my support!

Thanks to the people who responded to my frustration on the 5/2 diet. I did enjoy the humorous link Cinque sent and will try some of the ideas and see how I go.

Have never been a fan of pasta or rice and always have salads without dressing and don’t have a sweet tooth. Don’t drink tea or coffee just oodles of tap water.

Will consider a 4/3 or just dinner on fast days if I have no success after 3 months on the 5/2
I do believe after menopause though that I have to battle my body to down size. We’ll see who wins.
in the end.

Hi, JAM JAM: I was just reading your post and it made me think. Besides being post menopausal, I have hypothyroidism. I am lucky, though, because my medication has my thyroid well under control. I exercise and I am watching what I eat. I love the Mediterranean diet I am on. So healthy! But I am really annoyed by the one thing I can’t change. When we age, the shape of our bodies change, our waistlines get bigger, even if we don’t put on weight. Even exercise isn’t going to bring back the waistline I had pre-menopause. Bummer! It really does impact how our clothes fit and is soooo annoying. Haha! It doesn’t stop me from trying though! I am also after the potential health benefits of fasting that I read about. In fact, they are my biggest incentive, especially if they actually do impact autoimmune problems. That could take six months to a year. I am willing to give that a try! Good luck and have a great day!