Hi jeni17389 and all new fasters

I’m feeling good I’ve stuck to my 500calories and am not feeling hungry. I think what’s helped has been frequent fruit teas which I’ve drunk instead of putting my hand in the biscuit barrel !! Looking forward to day2 on Thursday. Good Luck everybody.

Hi, this is my first post. I am feeling a little euphoric, to have found a health regime that I like, and have enjoyed so many positive posts. I have never dieted and until recently exercise managed my weight for me. But a sedentary spell following injuries drove me to Michael’s documentary and kapow! I was hooked. So, I have had two fast days and actually enjoyed the sensation, I only felt hungry when the family was cooking. I got up early the next day and cooked up a yummie breakfast feeling 10 years younger and a whole lot smarter. So, thank you Michael, right now this feels easy and rewarding. I love all the recipes I am seeing on the forums.
just thought I would share some newbie enthusiasm …

Hello,

I have been at this now since April 29, 2014. By week 8 I had lost 5 inches around my abdomen and 12 lbs. I didn’t really watch all that much what I ate the other days although I must have stayed within my TDEE to an extent or no weight loss would have occurred, right? It would have been maybe 5 lbs and all of that just water. I did not exercise during that time. Well, about week 10 on, I have been very frustrated with my lack of progress. I have attempted to incorporate my TDEE and even begun exercising all to discover that I have gained 6 lbs yet have lost another inch around my abdomen. Clothes fit a bit looser but have not gone down a size. I am feeling rather dismal at this point. I think I plan to go to 1 fast day per week as the two days with no progress has done a number on my psyche and am feeling really pessimistic at this point. The 5:2 book was very motivating at the time I read it. Now I feel as if I was mislead. I can’t seem to handle yet another day of fasting. I suppose I have a bad attitude but I think I will just try my one day of fasting and the rest eat 100 cal below my TDEE as well as exercise and see whether I will get anything moving at all. I have had my thyroid checked and all is well. I am certainly glad of my inches lost around my abdomen, but the rest is discouraging. Just sharing my sob story as I haven’t found a post that isn’t positive for the most part and that too, makes me feel discouraged. All of these people I read about are exercising quite a lot which is great if they have been active before, but I am not one of those people. I have all in all about 50 pounds to lose so that I can get into the ‘just overweight’ level of BMI and will attempt to progress from there. Anyone else out there dare to share their stories of lack of success with this regimen? For those of who to whom this is a new experience or who are having great results, keep up your good work! Not mean to discourage just sharing for support. Thanks.

Simcoeluv,

You have given me some very excellent advice and links! I will attempt to not give up but feel can only fast for one day per week for a bit and stay below TDEE for now. I find that after my fast days I am having a hard time with wanting to eat everything I know I should not(however, I will add that I eat less of the ‘bad things’ than I did before going on 5:2)! It’s like this compulsion to ‘get it all in before I can’t have it again on that second day. I realize this is very self-defeating and I need to think more on why I do this but any tips for overcoming this ‘urge’ would be great!

Hi Hope. Hope I think your discouragement is totally misplaced. The fact that you have lost and are still losing fat off your abdomen is the result that you should be looking for above all.

Weightloss for all of us is primarily about losing fat. Fat is the thing we all hate. Its the thing that makes us wobble and not be able to fit into our clothes and so on.

Exercise makes us grow muscle and prevents us losing muscle when we are losing weight. Muscles weighs more than fat. Fat is oil. Muscle is more like water. Fat weighs less than water. So you don’t need to gain much muscle to counteract the fat you are losing and this shows on the scale. Also there is probably more water in your system from the exercise. It depends on what exercise you are doing and how much but it does tend to cause some healthy water retention.

I feel all your worrying is for nothing. Keep going with the measuring tape and measure other parts of yourself too.

That said, i do not believe exercise is necessary for weight loss. All the research tells us this is so. Basically for exercise to make a difference to the speed you lose weight, you have to do a lot of it. Over an hour a day. Anything less is just good for you and helps you retain muscle or build it a bit. Many people who do a lot of exercise for weightloss, myself included, become unstuck down the track when injury strikes or change of life circumstances or something else. When we stop exercising suddenly, the weight comes back suddenly.

So if you are hating the exercise stop doing it before you are on an exercise dependent treadmill and just get a pedometer to help motivate you to keep moving. When you are slim you can take up more vigorous types of exercise. It will be better for you then and you won’t resent it so much. It will also be more fun.

So back to the scales. Have you tried or considered doing two days of consecutive fasting. I find it easier. Next time you are motivated to return to two days, try doing the two together. I did two separate days once and i found i felt i was in recovery from fasting every other day. But with two days i can at least feel normal most days of the week.

At first there was an urge to have a pig out and sometimes i have this thought in my head but i have found if i eat a big healthy late breakfast and then in early evening a big healthy dinner , i feel full but don’t need to over eat. I have sometimes come to miss that full feeling and now i find eating just two large meals a day helps get that while still staying below TDEE. I didn’t do it this way at first, only when i started to miss the full feeling and this was after a few months of eating quite small meals. If you are hungry later in the evening, you can save a few calories to have say an 8pm light healthy snack but i am now trying to eat in an 8 hour eating window to try to get the benefit of the healing fast.

I find i can do that because fasting has taught me how to restrain my appetite. But where are you at currently, i would suggest ageing with the two large meals and a light snack at about 8pm. Don’t leave it too late in the evening. And also try to go bed fairly early.

But yes i still reduce my non-fast calories from TDEE a little bit.

Another thing, if you keep improving the quality of your diet – eating more healthy foods and less unhealthy foods, you will have less reason to resent your efforts and any difficulties you come across.

Since i have quit sugar in January, i have constantly worked on improving the nutrition of my food and my cooking and i’m loving my food so much more than when i wasn’t on a diet. I don’t want to go back to eating how i used to do. I know that all these vegetables, nuts and seeds and chickpeas and lentils are doing me a world of good.

i do need to drink more water of course.

I have recently increased the amount of fibre i’m eating and i have noticed it causing a bit of a stall in my weight loss but i think its just fibre related water retention since i don’t go to the loo everyday. It may be time i reduce my non-fast calories a little more as well so i will look at that now.

And even though i’m eating such a lot of nutritious food, i’m still enjoying wine and the odd foray into the nasty world of sugar. (when i’m out at a social event). I don’t feel deprived.

You are doing well. Keep telling yourself that.

Another idea that helps is to consider weightloss and its associated deprivations as rewards rather than a punishment. It is in fact a reward for eating better. And eating better has so many rewards so learn to love it.