Don’t worry too much about it. I had the same problem at the beginning, but it changed.

At first I thought I had to reward myself with a super big bowl of ice cream on my feast days, but then I had to go to Europe for two weeks on business and I could not really do the 5:2 diet. (Tricky when you have a lunch and dinner every day)

So I started to eat more consciously. I ordered fish each time I could, with veggies and no potatoes, some salad and no desert. I tried to skip breakfast and if I had to have one, I ordered an egg with one slice of whole wheat bread.

Anyhow….cut a long story short: I started to adopt some healthier food choices, purely out of fear that I would gain back the 6 kg that I had lost before my trip. To my utter surprise after two weeks “indulging” I had lost half a kg when I weighed myself for the first time after my return.

So where is the help for you: I read the following in a very good book “The Calorie Myth”: make a rule: each time you want to indulge in a pizza, make yourself eat a big bowl of veggies or salad FIRST. You will be surprised how filling this can be and how little room you have left for a whole pizza.

Perhaps worth a try?

Best of luck
Stef.

Seasider – Yeah I don’t think you’re alone. A lot of people are little piggies on non-fastdays to start out with (myself included). I noticed quite quickly that I was probably eating a bit more on non-fastdays than I had before I started 5:2, so I started paying attention to the calories on non-fastdays and making sure I stuck to less than 2000 (as if it was a ‘proper fad diet’ – it just helped me introduce some discipline). Once I got comfy with knowing roughly what I was consuming on non-fastdays as well as fastdays I stopped worrying too much about counting quite so religiously.

I found that it helped a bit when I switched to not really eating breakfast and lunch on non-fastdays either (I only eat 1 500 calorie meal late in the day on fastdays). Restricting my ‘eating window’ on every day (not just fastdays) meant that it was hard for me to actually physically consume more than the 2000 (or whatever) calories in one or two sittings, unless I was making really hopelessly unhealthy food choices anyway. Even a whole Dominos pizza would probably come in at or around most people’s TDEE, so if that was all you were going to eat on a particular non-fastday then that would be ok. Not great – but ok.

I still have the odd binge even now (almost 18 months in) but going over my TDEE by about 200 calories seems paltry compared to what I used to munch my way through on a bingy non-fastday when I was just starting out.

I think that sometimes it a case of ‘over compensating’ for fast days or rewarding ourselves for ‘being good’ yesterday.

If we know our will power isn’t strong enough to eat just one or two slices then we don’t order the pizza!

Maybe you could try planning your non fast day food for a few days. Measure out exactly what you are going to eat, within your TDEE, down to the last crumb and when that’s gone – it’s gone and there is no more that day. Planning like this means you don’t have the ‘what can I have for dinner’ question which often ends up with overeating.

It’ll all come together – it just takes time to get into it

xx