I don’t count calories personally nor do I weigh/measure my food or watch what I eat. I make everything from scratch. In fact on my least feast day I enjoyed a lovely bacon cheeseburger/ with homemade fries followed by homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert! YUM with an added glass or two of raw milk. No veggies and maybe a banana every once in a while. This is the first lifestyle change in which I can eat what I want and still enjoy the benefits of losing fat without feeling deprived. On my feast days I actually struggle to eat and look forward to fasting days. Yeah I’ve gone crazy….maybe.

Just started 5:2 on Tuesday, have been counting my calories everyday so far but I think I’ll just start counting on fast days only, hoping to lose 25 pounds. This is a great forum everyone is so amazing. Hoping to have a flat stomach and (Maybe) abs by June 2016. 5’6 155lbs, anyone know if this will help me tone up and get a six pack with exercise included? At about 20-24% body fat right now and do not like my belly it’s horrible. Some one help me with fasting and advise for exercise as I have asthma. Thanks :))

Hey Bronx thanks so much for the help VIA your information and that’s a fantastic idea! I’m only 17 so I have much of my life ahead of me! That’s a shame about the loose skin and there is no point getting rid of it once it’s not bothering you or getting in your way 🙂 You must have lost so much weight to have loose skin like that because it usually only happens if you have lots of belly fat for a long amount of time, it kind of marks your weight loss story which you should be proud of! I amnt over weight I’m kind of skinny fat where my body is skinny all around but my stomach just is one mound of hard fat from all the crap Over the years and my waist is about 35+ inches because it kinda sticks out but it shouldn’t be hard to lose it within 6 months if I stick to the 5:2 and Brisk walking on my threadmill.

Kyle

Kyle,

Thanks for sharing your meal. Never had Cous and haven’t even seen it sold in stores near me. Of course I haven’t looked for it but I put Cous on my list of things to try. I’ll be looking for it the next time we go shopping.

Not much of a fish eater, but the steamed broccoli sounds good.

I don’t drink alcohol so my chaser would be skim milk or 2 TBSP apple cider vinegar in a glass of water. That might sound disgusting to some but it tastes great; I think it tastes a little like aged mozzarella cheese!

Bronx

I am not counting on eat days, but then my diet was already fairly healthy and I don’t have too much weight to lose. I am mainly doing this for long term health benefits. I do agree, though, that the whole point of this is that you will succeed in the long term if you don’t have to obsess about how much or what you are eating every day (while being a bit mindful about not bingeing – at least not every eat day!).

Don’t count at all, to me that’s the appeal of this Eating strategy.

On fast days I just skip breakfast and lunch, and est at light evening meal.

I don’t count calories on fast days. I find I’m not so hungry the next day and am careful with quantities. I’m certainly going to take advantage of any social things I can get and maybe my loss will be slower. I doubt it though as some days I just miss dinner.I put on 2kg over Christmas and New year. What a binge. Hopefully next week will get me to pre Christmas weight.
I’m going to Italy for 2.5 months and want to be slimmer and fitter before I go. Both are slow going.

I don’t count calories either on fast days OR food days. On fast days — I do 2 back-to-back — I try for a water fast but if I slip I have so little I’m still well under the allowance for a fast day. On food days I stick to protein, beans and veggies. I don’t worry about what they add up to and I don’t try to avoid fat. I eat HUGE salads at lunch that could very well approach my TDEE but I don’t care. It’s healthy food and I satisfy myself. At dinner on food days I have protein and veggies. How bad can that be?

I don’t weigh myself either. Who needs the anxiety and frustration when you don’t lose “enough” or end up on the inevitable plateaus?

I monitor my progress by the size jeans I’m wearing. I’m Humpty Dumpty shaped with all my weight around my waist so my jeans size is very indicative. I don’t expect to buy smaller jeans every week so I don’t feel set up for disappointment. I also take full-body selfies in profile and head on once a week. I don’t see the progress each week but over the course of a month I see some. Over the course of a season it’s clear and encouraging. The other thing that taking photos does is I can see what is *not* very apparent. That way I don’t get my feelings hurt if someone who saw me in the last couple weeks or the last month isn’t falling all over me telling me what a great job I’m doing. Then I don’t get pouty and want to compensate with food.

LOTS of dieting experience over the decades behind this strategy! I just think this method is more realistic, natural and successful for me. And BTW I’m down 3 jeans sizes in about 2 months.

Hi my name is Denise and I am not counting calories I will never count another calorie but what I do is I have one simple rule for my dining lately and that is if I can’t read it I don’t eat it so that keeps me away from a lot of the chemicals and additives and preservatives and I’m really enjoying this kind of lifestyle I eat what I want but if I can’t read it I don’t eat it and I have dropped 20 pounds since December 16th when I started

I’m quite new to the “fast” diet. I started last November and for the first two or three fast days I used the recipes in Michael Mosley’s book. I soon got fed up and decided to make the fast more severe by missing out breakfast altogether. I haven’t “counted calories” at all, just made sure the portions were quite small at night. Obviously there are no real carbohydrates on these days – just protein and veg like salads and greens. I don’t need to lose weight – my BMI was almost perfect before I started but did want to use the diet to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure. I’ve never dieted before this. I have lost weight though – about 6-7kg. I haven’t had direct measurement of either BP or blood cholesterol since I started so the jury is still out on that one.

I have found the fast days much easier than I thought. Not feeling faint or light-headed at all, no hunger pangs or feeling of weakness either. I do a lot of exercise – Pilates on the two fast days – and find it easier on an empty stomach.

My wife tells me I have an appallingly bad breath on the fast days, especially later in the day when I haven’t eaten for nearly 24 hours. Anyone else found this? Is there any coherent explanation?

I’ve only been counting them “after the fact” as it were. I wanted to see how much I would just naturally eat after a fast day, so eat what I want without carbs or sugar, then see how much it’s added up to. And the answer is, it varies, but I’ve only twice gone over my TDEE as I’m generally not hungry. Had a glass of wine tonight with a friend, a light supper filled me up ok and I’ve not done the measurements yet, but it’s sure to be over.

Hi restore:

A day runs from midnight to midnight, so no. You just have 48 hours of not eating during the week. This will explain how 5:2 is done: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

What you are doing is a simple reduced calorie every day diet. It will work just fine if you average eating below your TDEE each week.

Good Luck!

It’s entirely up to you, of course, but I wouldn’t squander all the good work of a fast day or set myself up for cravings on a food day by having a biscuit on my very first food day. My choice would be to have a solid successful week before I introduced the challenging treats and relatively empty calories.

You sound like you’re committed doing a gym routine on your very first fast day so you’ll know what you can and can’t do and what sets you up for your best success and I wish you well in your effort.

When I began last August 2015 I counted calories for two month. Now I eat the same things on the two fast days. I used the Spark Pages calories tracker for two months, to find out how many calories were in the foods I ate on fast days. When I was eating too any calories I either cut the portion size or eliminated the food for fast days. Now, I eat the same meal for breakfast on fast days and basically the same for dinner and I don’t count calories because I already know how many calories are in the meals. I purchased a scale to measure the meat portions but I eat very small portions of meat on fast days because they have a lot of calories and it takes a lot of meat to feel full. I am losing weight very slowly, about 0.5 pounds per week. It has taken me five months to lose 20 pounds.

I am on day 6 of the program and I have decided to put in another fast day today, making it 4:3. I feel like I want to give my new program a good boost. Nothing succeeds like success.
I counted calories on my NFD after the event, but interestingly enough, I ate my TDEE or very close to it. What is disappointing is that it was far more than I expected. I just ate a very healthy breakfast, lunch and small dinner and a snack of cheese and biscuits. Of course it was the cheese and biscuits that were the culprit, but it is nice to know that you can if you want to. If I go over, I will try to do the extra fast day.
I know this is weird, but I already feel slimmer. I went to the gym and did quite a weights workout and I had lots of energy. I have to say I feel great.
As long as I can keep posting on this site, I don’t feel alone in my struggle.
I will weigh in tomorrow and measure. I hope I can boast about a good result.
Good luck to you all on your journey.

I’ve now completed just over 3 years of 5:2 and I have never counted calories on the non-fast days. I think it would be psychologically self-defeating to do so. The whole point of 5:2 is to make the 2 days as easy as possible and to not worry about it on the 5 days. By now I don’t even obsess that much about the fast days either. I’ve never been a foody so I’ve just stuck to the same few options I originally followed on the 2 fast days, which are now committed to memory. My lunch time fruit snack varies a bit depending on what fruit is available, but breakfast is always the same and dinner is one of the two different options I first chose. This is probably too boring for most people but it doesn’t bother me, and it’s worked well for 164 weeks now.

Congrats. to everyone.Mr Data you have shown by reaching the 3 year mark its sustainable long term. My husband and I reached the 1 year mark a few weeks ago. He has plateaued at 10k, which he finds a little dissapointing.I feel his TDEE count has dropped so he would need to cut back a little on non fast days in order to kick start it again. But he feels no he is happy with how this is playing out and never wanted it to be a ‘diet’. I have hit my goal weight and tend to do a 14:3 rather than 5:2 as my maitenence program.Thought twice about fasting today as its ‘Easter Monday’ but decided as we have nothing special on today lets not use ‘Easter’ as a cop out for our usual Monday fast day. So far so good. Keep it up everyone, its tough but doable. The hardest thing I find is as we only eat one meal(evening) on fast days explaining to people over and over “no this is not a ‘diet’ day, this is what we do every Monday.”

Nope – don’t count.
Swore a few years ago never to diet again, and that is one promise I have kept for myself. Such a relief!
Surprisingly, although the weight has crept on a bit when I am very stressed with uni assignments, I find it very easy to just consider what a reasonable meal/snack might be (no counting) and think about balancing – you remember, the old yellow/orange & green thing? and getting enough fibre (encourages me to eat nuts, peanut butter sandwiches with banana – delicious ‘treat’ type things).
In just over 4 months I’ve lost 11 kgs out of the 25kgs I am eventually aiming for, so although I have disappointing days (particularly over Easter, I haven’t had a hope of sticking to my fast day, so I give up, eat some healthier choices & try again on another day) I am thrilled with the change.
My first goal is to get from the ‘obese’ range into ‘overweight’ – only 0.5 of BMI to go! Then my next goal will be to get halfway into the ‘overweight’ range. My final goal will be to hit ‘normal’.
I have a stocky skeleton (my wrists are as sturdy as many men’s even though I’m 5’2″, and my shoulders quite broad, so pretty dresses can be a struggle…) so I’m not pushing myself beyond that, until I get there and see what it looks like and feels like.
Also, I am 60, so I’m conscious that I need to maintain a bit of bodyweight & keep on with weight-bearing exercise so I don’t get osteoporosis – which would really slow me down!

Well done, CAnnbewarra! That’s a fantastic weightloss 🙂

Hi everyone. I’m new to this, only three Fast days done so far. It is wonderful to read so many successful, long term stories. I know I can’t cope with counting all the time and some of the other threads had me almost giving up before I began! I’m 12 stone now, need to lose 2 of them at 5’6″ to be a healthier bmi. I’m a terrible grazer though, so need to see if I can cut that out to keep things sensible on non Fast days. Any advice welcomed, always.

Hi Weight and welcome:

Here is some advice: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

Good Luck!

i count on all days. am pretty new to this and don’t have a very good natural gauge of how many cals are in everything. hoping in a few weeks or so when i feel more comfortable ill be able to do otherwise.

I only count now if I think I’ve gone way over, just as a check to see if I have, or to check the percentages/ grams of nutrients ( I’m mostly on low carb). But now I find I don’t need to as I don’t feel very hungry on nonFDs, or only what can be fixed with something small, like nuts or cheese. It helps that mostly I’m not eating breakfast, so lunch is easy not to over do things. FDs I count or I’d go well over.

When I started 5:2 for the first two months I recorded everything I consumed on a food tracker to help me learn about portion sizes and their calories. After a while a pattern developed and I wrote down the most popular items I ate in a notebook plus their portion size and calories and then kept a daily journal. After totalling this I would enter the same items on the food tracker and see how close I was (maths not being my strong subject) for about a week. Now I can look at an item and guess how many calories it contains fairly accurately and just check the food tracker if I eat something new. Now I don’t record anything but go by my weekly weigh in and looseness of clothes as a guide.

Yes, 5:2 works for me and I still do at least two fast days each week, for the health benefits. My BMI is 22.90.

Thank You fastinginberlin,
You had the perfect answer to the question I was going to ask!