Hi Jan and welcome,

Good luck on your journey starting tomorrow!! 🙂

Welcome Jannyb, annette gave you already good advice in saying that a lot of questions have been answered somewhere on this forum, so it is really worthwhile reading around a bit.

As you might know the first thing you should do is to calculate your BMR and TDE:
http://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

If you do 5:2 you will have to stay udner 500cal for women or 600 cal for men on your fast days. To be absolutely precise you should take 25% as your upper limit of your TDE in on your fast days, but as a rule of thumb take the 500/600 rule.
On the non-fast days you can eat up to your TDE, but do not over-indulge.

To calculate calories: there are two apps out there that are really worthile looking at: “myfitnesspal” or “LoseIt!”. I used LoseIt! first but have now changed to myfitnesspal as it integrates better with my fitbit force. Both apps cost nothing and they can even scan your food items. Personal tip: try and over-estimate your calorie intake instead of under…it is better in the long run.

There are variations of the 5:2:
4:3 – means fasting 3 days a weeks and eating for 4
ADF: alternate day fasting – every second day fasting
16:8 – try to eat all of your daily food within a window of 8 hours; i.e. if you have dinner at 6pm do not eat anything until 10am the next morning.

There are different ways of approachng your fst days: for me it works best to eat nothing at all during the day and then consume my whole 500 cal in one go in the evening. That way I have a “proper” dinner and also if I eat something during the day I get hungrier.

Drink lot’s of water or tea EVERY day. It kills the hunger feeling and it is good for you.

Finally- just stick to it! It does work and the best incentive are the tumbling pounds on your scale and the loser clothes.

Best of luck and keep us in the loop!
Stef.