Hi Vicki, I know it’s good advice. I’m not sure though if I dare at the moment. Silly thing is, probably fear is worse than reality.

Having just one piece of Lindt shows fabulous restraint I think.

Hi Everyone, I will be turning 50 in December, but am already in menopause over the past year. I also did the HCG diet and lost 120 lbs over a year and a half. It completely changed how I eat, however I have gained 20 of those 120 back over the last year. I am 5’7″ and currently weigh 230 lbs so obviously I still have a good bit to lose. I really really want to find a way to lose 50 lbs to get to 180. I’ve been doing the “Eat Stop Eat” fasting routine (fast for 16 hrs, eat for 8 hrs every day) over the last 3 weeks and lost 4 1/2 lbs the 1st week, then gained a lb and a half over the next 2 weeks. I work out at the gym 1/2 hr 4 days a week. I just entered my info in one of those calculators online (actually used 3 different ones on 3 different sites), and all of them said to maintain my weight I should be eating around 2300 calories a day, 1800 to lose weight! I currently eat 1200 – 1300 and can’t lose weight. I’m terrified of eating more cause I don’t want to gain any more. I already eat healthier than all of my friends (no bread or processed carbs, mostly fruit, veggies, and meat). I’m considering switching to the Fast Diet. Since I adjusted well to the HCG requirement of 500 calories/day, I don’t think I’d have trouble with that at all. My trouble is how much to eat on the non-fast days! Help!

Hi precious Booboo
I get most of my calories from Chicken,fish and eggs. Breakfast is as on P35 of the Fast Day Recipe Book, Why? I just like the taste. Thus the cals are largely from egg. Supper, the more calorie dense meal, is often chicken but 1 in 4 is fish. A few cals are kept back for a low calorie pre-sleep drink with a splash of milk,largely because such drinks are a lifetime habit. The rest of the cals are made up of saladings and veggies. I try to be as accurate as possible with the calorie counts.
I,like some of the forum, struggled to lose any weight during my fifties but it became easier in my sixties. It seems to be different for each person. Its those hormones again!!!!!

emmbee

MountainMyst that’s very interesting! I have had these migraines since my 20s when they were set off by the pill. But I also had some really nasty viral illnesses around that time too. No other ME/CFS symptoms till my early 50s when the thyroid gland gave up on me.

If I start eating, I can’t stop, and as long as the head is OK to start the day I have no difficulty getting through the day without food. Its been relatively good today, so my plan is to NOT drink this evening when our friends come round, and try fasting tomorrow. I felt so much better when I was fasting, and now feel relatively grotty and craving sugar, so its worth getting back on track.

I think when you’ve been 60+ years on this planet with the ‘normal’ collection of sorrows, bad eating habits and medical interventions of dubious merit, things are bound to have been a bit mangled. I just hope that by sorting out my eating now, and keeping the doctors away as much as I can I’ll improve my quality of life for longer. In a way whether its ME or something else, or just cumulative wear and tear matters little, as long as I can mitigate the effects. And IF combined with reduced carbs seems to make a difference.

Hi Everyone, I’m 51 and also in menopause. Don’t want to lose weight too quickly because I don’t want my skin to sag too much! Sounds vain, but though I’ll be happy to see more prominent cheekbones, I don’t want to have jowls as well 🙂 The first time around (earlier this year) I lost about 1 pound per week on the scales, but noticed that my clothes were becoming looser. Perhaps we each respond to diet in different ways because of our individual biology/biochemistry? I’m more interested in ‘shrinking’ than weight measurement and definitely would like to feel healthier overall. Good luck to all of us! 🙂

Hey Ruthi, good for you! did the headache stay away?

And another successful day of fasting! I managed to distract myself until nearly 6.00 pm too, which was good.

I am feeling so very much better!

Also started meditating with Headspace http://www.getsomeheadspace.com which is helping me deal with a stressful period in my life. I’ve tried meditating before but found it quite a challenge. These guided meditations seem to work far better for me.

Maybelle, the answer is yes, everything has got easier, and I pay relatively little attention to my weight now, I just make sure I can get into my (new, or newly recovered from the loft) clothes!

And as I have felt better I have started to take much more interest in healthy eating. And what supplements might help, and what else I can do to help improve my health. So overall, I’ve come a very long way in 4 months or so, in which losing about a stone, and dropping a dress size is only part of the story. I have also been able to reduce my thyroid meds slightly, and stop the omeprazole completely.

PreciousBooBoo, thanks for posting this thread. I am 52 (post-menopausal) and have been doing 5:2 for about 4 weeks with no change in weight. It bounces up and down within a 3-lb. range. Very frustrating!! The fast days are challenging so I’m not willing to do 4:3, I’m afraid it would feel too much like punishment.

Thanks to all who posted, you have encouraged me to up my frequency of exercise. I’m determined to stick with 5:2 to see whether it has an effect on my high cholesterol, so I’m hanging in there for now.

Hi everyone! I just discovered 5:2 and haven’t even begun yet, but then I saw this topic and ha! I’m 54 and 1/2 years old. I need/want to lose 30 pounds (sorry gals, I have no clue what a “stone” is – lol). I tried all sorts of diets but nothing worked until I found a LowCarb HighFat diet. And I lost 20 pounds! In Oct 2011, I went to work for a law firm – VERY HIGH STRESS and over the next 12 gained back 15 of those 20 pounds I lost. Well, I quit that job in April 2013 but haven’t been able to budge my weight. I firmly believe that being post-menopausal AND having that high stress job contributed to those additional 15 pounds. And I am excited to give 5:2 a whirl! It most certainly looks very doable!

In fact, I plan to start this Thursday night – because I know I’ll be able to eat supper Friday night! lol. and then start my 2nd fast day Sunday night and look forward to supper Monday night! (Is it “cheating” to “sleep” thru nearly half the fast?!!)

Oh, and another question – it okay to consume LESS than 500 calories on my fast days? Seriously, I’m thinking about drining reduced sodium beef broth and then sugar-free jello on my fast days. (Kind of like the prep for a colonoscopy – but without the laxatives!) I’m thinking those should be filling but way less than 500 calories!

PreciousBooBoo – you asked about starches increasing blood sugar levels – and the answer is yes. Starches (and all carbs for that matter, and protein eventually) convert into glucose in our bodies and that gets stored as fat.

I plan to stick to my LowCarb HighFat way of eating on my nonfast days. To me this is no longer a “diet,” but rather my way of eating (WOE) now.

I’m glad to have found this group!

Well! I know you say you are struggling, but that weight loss is much more than fluid!

You could try skipping the bread for breakfast, and having salad instead. Although better than white bread, wholemeal can still spike your glucose levels, and that makes it harder to hold out till the next meal. I tend to reserve all my carbs and sugar for the evening, because I know its downhill all the way once I start! In fact on fast days I avoid all carbs, its only on normal days that I eat any at all.

In time, as your glucose levels stabilise, you might well find your moods do too.

So I meant to start my first 5:2 last night (Thursday) – but didn’t. Ugh. I’ve had so much going on in my life right now and yesterday was my first “break” in nearly 2 months that I actually made and ate 2 biscuits last night for supper. I’ve been on a low-carb way of eating for years now so this was really not a good decision on my part to begin with. I will “come to my senses” though and plan to start this tonight. I am 54 years old, 5′ 5″ and currently weigh 160. My goal is 130! Two years ago, I was able to go from 160 to 140 but 15 pounds crept back on and now I vacillate from 155 to 160. Double ugh.

So happy to have found a place where many of us who are in the same peri- or post-menopausal boat can share our experiences with the 5:2 diet. I am a 50 yr. old who began the diet four weeks ago after nearly two years of alarming (and mystifying) weight gain; I am very active, overall eat very well and still am continuing to gain about 7 lbs a year! My normal, healthy weight–last seen briefly 6 years ago–is about 130 (at 5 ft. 6 inches). It also produces a healthy BMI. But I have found myself struggling with weight in the upper 140’s and into the 150’s. Completely frustrated, I read about this diet and gave it a very committed try. I will say that the less structured approach that I’ve tried independently could not bring me down under the 150 that seems to be my hill to die on & I was looking for something that would help break up that log jam.

Well, this seems t be it. And not because two days of fasting allows for five days of eating–and drinking– whatever I wanted. What I learned very quickly is that whatever Ioss I saw after a fast day was quickly obliterated by the next day of mindless eating. It seems some people (young men? girls with the metabolisms of teenagers?) can do so & still see results but what I’ve learned is that for me, the fast day kick starts a modified–less extreme–version of a fast day the following one. Yes, my efforts are more dramatic on Monday & Thursday, but I go to bed nearly every night at least peckish if not out and out HUNGRY. But, I know that I am eating so much better than I was. Lessening what I put in makes me very selective about what nutritional bang for my caloric buck I can get back from what I’m about to eat. It has become truly an exercise in quality over quantity and getting comfortable with the idea that weight loss–for me–is definitely accompanied by some hunger pangs. I am still happy with the idea that this plan results in a slow and steady loss (with the occasional plateau) of about a pound of week;the longer I am on it, the easier it becomes to limit portions or simply resist eating large ‘normal’ meals, especially at dinner time, which really tends to un-do all my focused work from the day leading up to it.

Having said that, I would’ve been happy with just a slow and steady 4 lb. weight loss after these first four weeks but I was surprised to have lost 7+ lbs. so far. Most significantly for me, I have managed to squeak below 150 on the scale (I started at 153.8 and am now at 146.6). My focus is on making my way back to 140, and then tackling, slowly but surely, that journey from 140 back to the 130 that I would like to maintain long term. This diet, though not effortless in any way, works, and I am very, very encouraged by it. I plan to remeasure myself at 6 weeks. I encourage anyone who has a deep commitment to achieving better health (I myself was shocked to see that my starting weight tipped my BMI firmly into the ‘overweight’ category as opposed to the ‘high normal’: ouch!) to STICK WITH IT. I’ve had my moments with a piece of cake or a sea salt chocolate bar, but they were few and far between (as opposed to daily occurrences) and that really matters.

On a fun note, I told myself that I would not try on any of the clothes that I haven’t been able to squeeze into for a year (or two!) until I hit 145, But just out of curiosity, i wondered if at 147.4, I might already be able to get back in to any of them comfortably. And the answer was YES! What a motivator to stick with it. I’ll check in again as I near the 6 week mark that I had allotted myself for this approach. Hopefully, there will be more good news to share. Good luck to all of you who are in this with the highest hopes and the best intentions. It’s a marathon, not a sprint–allow your body time to make the changes that you’re requiring of it. And one last thing that I’ve learned these past 4 weeks: food tastes really, really good when you’re eating it when you are truly authentically hungry–as opposed to bored, peckish, tempted, bummed out, restless, struck by a random craving or simply filling your time with a bag or plate of something. Enjoy the feeling of truly feeding your body well with what it needs, rather than giving in to every message it sends out about what it might want in the moment. Yo;ll feel so much better.Have a good and empowering week!

I’ve been under the radar for the last few weeks as I was finishing off a research project report that is part of my MA in History of Art. This involved travelling to Scotland where, with my husband, I combined research interviews and writing up with a few days holiday.

I confess this involved a certain amount of nutritional naughtiness, in other words for nearly a fortnight, the Fast Diet went out of the window (no deep-fried Mars bars, though – do they really exst, BTW?). However, neither of us found we could eat nearly as much as before we embarked on the 5:2 route. On our return, we had each regained 2 kilos. In the past, in my case at least, it would have been at least a stone.

All of last week I was more or less chained to my computer while I prepared the final draft of my report, which meant burning the candle at both ends and consuming naughty things like dark chocolate (try the one containing a touch of sea salt) on the pretext I needed brain food. Those two extra kilos are still there, but at least I haven’t put on any more. This means I’m now only 3 kilos down from where I started in late January, but clothes that were once too small now fit nicely and look good.

So why have I posted on this thread? If it’s any comfort to mature ladies out there, I’m 73. The Fast Diet has worked for me, although my results aren’t as spectacular as many of yours. However, the cholesterol is down to an acceptable 4.8, my two BP meds are each down to 2.5 mg (I actually don’t know while I still need them as my BP is 105/63). And I have the stamina to work freelance, study part-time, and do at least some of my houshold chores – fortunately I’m married to a man who’s a much better housewife than me – and have a social life.

I am 52 and have been on the 5:2 diet since April of this year.
I have found that the 2 day fast maintains my weight and if I want to loose weight,say after a holiday binge, then I have to keep to a vigorous calorie-controlled diet for the non-fast days.
For the most part I try to stay away from the cakes and bread and exercise when I can and this along with the fasting keeps me on an even keel!
For the menopausal amongst us it’s not as easy as for some!
Good luck!

Ruthi, You are doing so well and have been for more than 4 months. It must be close to five by now. It must make you very, very happy about what you’re doing for your body and for your general health. Keep it up!!

Update: having been home two weeks and fasted four times, I’ve lost the surplus two kilos picked up on holiday. Once upon a time it might have taken me six months – or the extra weight might have just stayed there. Slowly but surely the Fast Diet seems to be working.

Hello! I am 72 and have lost 10kgs-(22lbs)after having a heart attack earlier this year. My arms, legs, neck and upper body have all got much smaller, well the fat must have gone from somewhere, but will the fat round my ‘middle’ eventually go? The dreaded muffin top! I would love to hear some encouragement, I am doing the 5:2 and going to the gym twice a week, all I am allowed at the moment and do quite a bit of running up and down stairs and walking to the shops but it doesn’t seem to shift.

Mosleys Bit On

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