It comes down to what you are eating. Foods like bread, pasta, pizza, rice, potatoes all cause your blood glucose to spike. This raises your insulin levels which means the calories are stored as fat, rather than burning fat. Continue to eat up to your TDEE and 1/4 TDEE on fast days but try and eliminate the foods I just mentioned. Do you drink fruit juices? Eliminate fruit juices, if you want fruit eat a whole pieces of fruit. Never dried fruit. Do you have sugary drinks? Avoid them. Do you eat cereal for breakfast? Avoid cereals. Avoid any grain based foods.

OK change things up a little bit for say one month and see what happens. Go without alcohol for one month. All alcohol must be processed by the liver and stored as fat! Have your eggs scrambled without the toast in the morning. Have the curry without the chapatti. Im not saying you need to be a monk and abstain from everything but do it for a month and see what happens.

On the occasions that I have some bread my blood glucose will be a lot higher the next day when I measure it after waking up. No grain based carbs and it will be 4.5-5.0 mmol/L. If I have grains it will be 5.5-6.0 mmol/L. If youre trying to lose weight that higher BG level isn’t going to help.

Try not to eat anything solid. You need to feel the hunger. That’s the moment your body will look for stored fat. It only lasts a few minutes. Drink tea or water constantly.

On eating days you can be indulgent, but moderately. I don’t buy the carb police at all. Just eat what you want and look forward to a nice sinful white bread bacon sandwich on a difficult fast moment. Don’t fast 2 consecutive days. I fast Monday and wednesdays. Sometimes I throw in a 3rd day.

I lost a lot of weight this way and, to be honest, without too much suffering. I actually enjoy fasting.

Hi Sanj,

I’ve lost over 30 kgs and it didn’t take me long to discover that fast days worked best for me if I didn’t eat until dinner and then had all of my calories at once as it gave me a decent amount of food and meant not going to bed hungry. I also found that once I started to eat I didn’t want to stop and as a result I no longer eat before lunchtime on any day.
Having said that, whether you eat or not on a FD, when you eat and what you eat on any day is entirely up to you as we are all giving our opinions which are usually what works for us and might not be appropriate for you so you’ll need to work that out for yourself by trial and error.

There is nothing abnormal about blood glucose being raised after eating and insulin being released in response. That is an entirely normal physiological process and not something to be feared. The important fact is that your diet is healthy and balanced and not overloaded with processed carbs and sugar.

There is no reason why you should give up your glass of red wine unless you really want to. As for carbs, I don’t eat packet food for example cereals, (apart from porage oats) biscuits, snacks etc. I eat dried fruit in small amounts several times per week. If I have bread it is occasionally and if I were you I would give up the toast but not the chapati or at least ensure I didn’t eat them both on the same day. Eggs are a good option for the first meal of the day as egg protein has been shown to keep you felling full for longer.
I eat small amounts of potatoes, rice and pasta occasionally, no reason to give them up either.
If you read the fast diet book it states categorically that no foods are off limits. In my opinion it is about quantity and making healthy choices the majority of the time, not making life a misery because we can’t have a glass of wine or a piece of bread.

The other thing to remember is that weight can fluctuate as much as a couple of kgs over the course of the day for many reasons and working out can cause a temporary rise on the scales due to the body’s muscle recovery process. Don’t worry about the 700g after the first week, just look at the overall trend and I’m sure that after a few weeks you’ll see that your weight is moving in the right direction.

Sanj, this is not a quick fix, the average weight loss is 1-1.5lbs per week. You need to keep going and be patient. If you are doing it properly and creating a calorie deficit the weight will come off.

I eat everything,dried fruit every day,chocolate,ice cream,bread,pizza,drink sometimes beer. It’ s calorie in vs calorie out. Plain simple. The quallity of weight loss depends on macro counting and proper exercise. You could do leangains two meals a day,lunch and dinner. 2000 calories per day,cycle carbs,three times per week bodyweight workout and smile how easy it is. Sorry for my english.

Sanj, would it help you to think of this as a lifestyle change instead of just a weight loss diet? That way you keep doing it regardless of weight loss.

Periodic fasts are so healthy for our bodies, especially our brains and hearts! When we go without food our cells start cleaning out damaged parts. Scientists now think that some cancers come from damaged mitochondria, which are cleaned out during fasts. Plaques that form in the brain and may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease are also cleaned out during fasts. You lose visceral fat, which makes you much healthier regardless of the weight loss.

So even if you’re not losing weight as quickly as you may like, think of the other health benefits. Personally, I fast for the anti-aging benefits and the weight loss is just an extra benefit. Both of my parents died early from ill health and I don’t want to follow that path.

Weight loss= Calorie in vs calorie out

Fat loss= Macro counting + proper exercise= Calorie in vs Calorie out

Optimal health= Fast diet, leangains, eat stop eat, 4:3 diet + paleo, primal eating =Macro counting + proper exercise= Calorie in vs Calorie out

Neostaford- I think the calories in and out theory is still just a theory. Studies show that it is much more complex than that.

If it was just a simple calories in/calories out equation, then how do you explain those weeks when I KNOW I have stuck to the rules and yet done darned scales don’t budge one smidgin?…and it is not that I have suffered from food amnesia!

The ‘equation’ is a LOT more complicated than just calories. …For me personally I know that some of my meds (and I’m on a fair few!) can muck around with my metabolism….stress can cause an unexpected scales-reading too.

Everyone is an individual and needs to look at how their own body works.

One thing is for sure 5:2 DOES work if you stick at it. Some weeks you plateau and then all of a sudden the weight starts to shift again….I should know, I’m in this for the long haul. 8 stone (ish) lost and counting!…done over a few years with a few minor gains , quite a few plateaus…but an overall downward trend.

Sanj…stick with it!

Hey all — Sanj2710 I HEAR YA!! I just posted earlier this week (on a different thread) that I take my measurements once a month and all of a sudden this month I’m UP an inch in two places! WHAT?!?!?! I’ve been doing this WOL since April 11 and for the most part have had good results …I plan on sticking with this for the rest of my life so I turn to this forum for CONSTANT encouragement, advice, laughs and venting. For me it’s easy for me to “get in my own head” and get frustrated/depressed when I didn’t do as well as I THOUGHT I had ….but then I have to stop and remind myself that “hey, if I wasn’t doing this WOL it would have been DOUBLE whatever I did” …. 🙂

From a physics viewpoint its more like: calories in + calories out + calories storage (i.e. fat + glycogen) = constant. The calories in calories out model is a little too simplistic.

http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter