Victoria, that’s perfectly normal. You will be lighter the day after your fast for a variety of reasons, e.g. less water retention, less food ‘in transit’.

If you just think about what your food weighs, you will see that just eating more will make you heavier (my morning cup of tea weighs 400g, hence I weigh before I drink it!). On a daily basis you are not seeing ‘lost 1lb of fat’/ ‘gained 1lb of fat’.

Everyone’s weight varies within and between days. Mine is highest on a Monday morning after the weekend, but will reduce (without fasting) to a low (perhaps as much as 3lbs lighter) on Saturday.

Weigh daily to understand how your weight fluctuates, but take note of the long term trend. If you are not seeing a gradual loss, week on week, then you may be eating too much on your non-fast days. But please don’t start eating less based only on weighing more when you aren’t fasting!

On fasting days, you’ll lose liver glycogen, and about 15 grams/kilogram of body weight. (actually the amount depends on lean body mass) And added to that will be about 2-2.7 grams of water per gram of glycogen, depending on who you believe. So if you tally it up for a lot of people this can amount to between 5-10 lbs or so of water sloshing around on fasting vs non-fasting days. You’d never in the short term often see a 1 lbs loss of fat, so you have to be patient. Some people can’t handle the number fluctuations emotionally,so they only weight themselves once a week. But to me it’s better to see the numbers fluctuate so that you can understand that your weight is actually a range, depending on water and glycogen retention. It is revealing though when you see lower numbers appear on the scale that you’ve never seen before. Hopefully you’re moving downwards.

Into 2nd week and can feel I am losing. According to scales 4lb My weight does fluctuate daily but def weighing less at end of 11 days. Have started walking at lunchtime. Starting to swim next week too.

I’ll second Swizzle’s comment. Been going just over a month and still find the fasting days quite a chore. However, I’m 7lb lighter now and into a size smaller trousers and shirts. Most interesting of all, I have rheumatoid arthritis that, for a long time, as well as giving me painful and swollen joints and muscles, has also affected my lung function significantly.

I keep a diary of symptoms to report them to my consultant. At my last 6-monthly review, I reported that I had about one serious ‘flare’ per week on average with a shoulder, hand or other joint putting it out of action for several days with associated severe pain. Since starting on 5:2, I have made no entries at all in my diary. None. Pain free for almost five weeks and no swelling. No pain killers needed and feeling fine.

Obviously, it may not be down to the 5:2 and something else is at play but I now think that, if the diet has something to do with it, fast days are a small price to pay for such a positive change. Weight loss is a bonus.