Hi Anjpink,

My best advice would be to persevere for as long as you can with 5:2. I’ve been doing it now for over 7.5 years and have successfully lost the initial weight and kept it off. I lost about 17kg in the first 6 months I was doing it but it wasn’t a consistent loss by any means. I had at least 3 occasions when I plateaued for a few weeks – and even had a small increase – but then started losing weight again. I took the decision to weigh myself every day rather than just once a week and that helped me to see the daily fluctuations which showed that between the weekly readings I was going up and down all the time. That helped me to keep believing that the weight would start falling again after each time the loss stalled.

Very best of luck with it.

No problem. I really hope it works for you.

You’re only ever 24 hours away from being able to eat what you want – and hopefully by the time you get there you won’t want to eat it anyway.

I found making certain I had some flavour on Fast Days helps. Water and black coffee got tedious for me by dinner time so I’ve taken to having a zero coke just to give the taste buds something different to enjoy. Whatever works for you as an individual is the key, because then it’s so much easier to stick with it for the long term.

Hi Anjpink, there is a good (old) post for you to check out so you don’t feel that it is just you having trouble losing weight on 5:2. Enjoy: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/really-no-weight-loss/

Make it as easy and sustainable as you can for yourself, and keep on keeping on. Best wishes and all good things.

Hi Anjpink. There’s no harm in throwing in a few 4:3’s – I think I did it two or three times in the first 6 months. I’m a big fan of Dr. Mosley and the various programmes he’s produced over the years. It all seems to make sense. I think I did see the 800 a day programme but I can’t remember the details now. Was it repeated again recently or am I mixing it up with something else he did? If it is the one I can recall I think the thinking was that a swift loss of weight right at the start helps to stop the body getting used to being fed less and/or needing less energy to sustain itself so more weight is lost in a quicker time. I think it was only recommended if you were quite over weight to begin with but I am going off a very dim memory here. It wasn’t around when I started doing 5:2 so having lost the weight I’m just sticking to two 600 calorie Fast Days a week (except holidays and there are always times when life demands a 6:1 instead – the important thing is to get straight back to the 5:2 as soon as possible afterwards). I did try doing long term maintenance on 6:1 for a while but the weight slowly crept back on and was actually much harder to shift the second time around. My target is to have a BMI of 22.5 and after doing 6:1 for a bit it actually took me several years to get back to that again on a regular basis. I never went higher than 23.7 but always had a few more kg than I wanted. However for the last 8 months or so I have been back at anywhere from 22.1 to 22.6 all the time. Salads over the summer have always helped, but lockdown actually gave me much more time to exercise as I wasn’t commuting any more. My wife and I had been walking 4 miles a day along a local river and canal almost daily until the clocks changed. Too dark now to do it after work, but the weekends are still ok.

Very glad you saw some more weight loss. I know from my daily weighings that I can lose or gain anything up to a kilo from one day to the next – and not always for any obvious reason either. I just keep trusting the process on the weight gain days. Sorry your holiday was cancelled. Covid is such a monumental pain. At least no-one close to me has had it badly but I do know about a few deaths and some very severe reactions from friends and colleagues so the threat is very real.