RT, I’m gasping for breath by the time I’ve finished reading one of your posts. Help me out with a few more commas and full stops, or if you can’t manage that a beer will do nicely 😉
I’ve not weighed myself since before I went to Cuba, so there’s little point in doing so now. I’ll wait until NYE for a year end recording of success so far.
Not gaining weight is an excellent result for this week. Have a great weekend:P

Hi, Merry Christmas all have I just bought the new book for myself as a Christmas present and working out 25% making notes and planing menus as well as exercise days and classes. Hope i am doing it right.!? X

Nama thanks for the link. I don’t think that’s my issue as I stop using any electronic devices at least 2 to 3 hours before bed and read a REAL book in regular light for that time and if I’m still not sleepy enough I’ll read for a while in bed too. I’ve had some worrying things happen lately and think maybe they’re having an impact (I go through the day not thinking of them but during the night they surface I’m sure).

RT thanks for thinking of me as a Wood Nymph … bahahahaha as if!!!

Wee glad to hear you had a good Christmas. Wiwi I’m sure those pesky scales will be nicer next year (or should that read next week, lol). Hi also to Nicky, Emel, Tartan, Smiffy, Hermaj, SAMM, Amazon, Jojo, PVE, Bay, Barata, Lori-PA, Happy and everyone else, in the words of RT ‘you know who you are’ 😀

Hello all you happy, positive people!

Well it’s time to address the carnage, so brewed coffee with a few fresh cherries and strawberries for breakky and a brisk walk along the river coming up! To those of you up North, enjoy another day of reckless abandon….cheesecake, yum!

Wee, enjoy your ice cream, remember what it looks like when it melts? It’s nearly all air!
RT and Amazon, you BOTH have me in stitches! You won’t need those fat jeans girl, give them to charity …they need them! My essential piece of clothing these days is a belt. RT the eggs were a hit, now they will expect them every year….thought we would have a healthier option than the usual croissants.

Jojo I am not in a hurry for grandchildren either, I just think little ones make the magic of Xmas more special. I nursed babies to 12 yr olds the last 20 yrs of my nursing life, I love kids and think a lot of adults could learn from them. I know what you mean about all being in the same room for a few days though, such a shame for your poor daughter. I really hope she is feeling much better very soon. My 30 yr old son commented that he thought the fun of Xmas was over during his teenage yrs, but now realizes how lovely it is to catch up with all his cousins etc, glad he appreciates them! How lovely to fit comfortably into a new dress, enjoy!

SAMM I hope your new provider comes thru as planned, we miss your wisdom and humour on here! I hope things going well as possible for you at the moment.

Have a lovely day/arvo all, cheers!

Hi Nama my eldest son is prone to using the “food coma” and or “epic feast” 😯 either one but I did see SAMM put it too good use the other day which is very 😎
Amazon your quite right I do think faster than I write and of course you can read my offerings faster than I can speak the beers on me 😆
AO and Wood Nymph hmmm the perfect symmetry naughty and nice 😉
Peace RT

Wow, Purple. A folk festival and pizza. What a way to go! 🙄

We are fitting in 9 holes of golf with friends and family when we can. In between eating much smaller meals than i ever used to. And going for a long walk every morning. With all the feasting, I Have probably gained about a kg, but couldn’t care less. This is the holiday season, and we know how to lose that in the first week of fasting. 😆

All the best to everyone. Cheers, Bay 🙂

Hi Wee, well done. I say chicken wings, as it’s the mental image I have. Glad to say my bingo / chicken wings are gone. 😉

Looking forward to celebrating one year of IF on 25 January.

Beautiful sunny day in Melbourne. Cheers, Bay 🙂

Morning/evening all.

Where does Jojo get all that energy from. I’m sitting on the sofa in my dressing gown, still half asleep and drinking tea hoping it will liven me up.
I’m keeping away from the sales, I don’t need any more clothes that will be too big in 3 months time 😉

Bingo/chicken/bat………….whatever they are they have been given notice to quit!
Time to get onto the exercise gear and get moving.
Have a great day/evening everyone 😛

All the best on Monday emel. Will be thinking about you. P x

Hi Emel

I will be thinking of you on Monday.

Bay

😉 wiwi

Well Amazon. With that new look you had better get out there and have fun! 😉

Can we end Christmas right now please. I want to fast

evning all just came in to say I went back on 5.2 this morning and finishing my day at 905.. go for it Amazon . 🙂 …I will be fasting tomorrow . have a good night Jojo and so glad daughter is feeling a wee bit better . I am so glad I am not a drinker and New year does nothing for me . I loved all the compliments too much this week to stop my journey now :0) 🙂 🙂

Wee xx

I agree pal . Isn’t this WOL just AMAZING!!!! 🙂 🙂

Wee xxx

Hi Purple I have been reading some of Dr Mercola research into the science of Intermittent Fasting here
http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/06/28/intermittent-fasting-health-benefits.aspx
Intermittent Fasting Is as Good or Better Than Continuous Calorie Restriction
I am really interested in having a trial period at this daily option as opposed to 5-2 or 4-3
SAMM is on the 19/5 I follow the Mercola formula 18/6 for all calorie intake
And I recall you writing that your husband only has the evening meal/dinner or tea depending on where you are from 😉 now that might be if you have tea at around the same time each night I will put up say 6-30pm he would be on a constant 22-2 fast daily is this correct do I have it around the right way?
He has had terrific weight loss -30kg and health benefits in reduced diabetics and obviously you as you only went along the journey as a support for him and you too have lost 29kg my question is this
What sort of calorie intake would he be on with one meal a day?
Thanks in Advance
Peace RT

Hello fellow Losers 😉

Nicky Emel and Aussie O in South Australia Nama in Victoria Bay in ACT PVE in NSW and Jojo SAMM HappyNow Wiwi Amazon Herm Lizzy Ply Weemam Tartan lass Smiffy Barata and Hello World (You know Who You) 😆

FYI

What the Science Says About Intermittent Fasting

By Dr. Mercola
Is it a good idea to “starve” yourself just a little bit each day, or a couple of days a week? Mounting evidence indicates that yes, intermittent fasting (IF) could have a very beneficial impact on your health and longevity.
I believe it’s one of the most powerful interventions out there if you’re struggling with your weight and related health issues. One of the primary reasons for this is because it helps shift your body from burning sugar/carbs to burning fat as its primary fuel.
As discussed in the featured article,1 intermittent fasting is not about binge eating followed by starvation, or any other extreme form of dieting. Rather what we’re talking about here involves timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting.
I prefer daily intermittent fasting, but you could also fast a couple of days a week if you prefer, or every other day. There are many different variations.
To be effective, in the case of daily intermittent fasting, the length of your fast must be at least 16 hours. This means eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, as an example. Essentially, this equates to simply skipping breakfast, and making lunch your first meal of the day instead.
You can restrict it even further — down to six, four, or even two hours if you want, but you can still reap many of these rewards by limiting your eating to an eight-hour window each day.

This is because it takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores; after that you start to shift to burning fat. However, if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours (or sooner), you make it far more difficult for your body to use your fat stores as fuel.
Intermittent Fasting — More a Lifestyle Than a Diet
I have been experimenting with different types of scheduled eating for the past two years and currently restrict my eating to a 6- to 7-hour window each day. While you’re not required to restrict the amount of food you eat when on this type of daily scheduled eating plan, I would caution against versions of intermittent fasting that gives you free reign to eat all the junk food you want when not fasting, as this seems awfully counterproductive.
Also, according to research published in 2010,2 intermittent fasting with compensatory overeating did not improve survival rates nor delay prostate tumor growth in mice. Essentially, by gorging on non-fasting days, the health benefits of fasting can easily be lost. If so, then what’s the point?
I view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, not a diet, and that includes making healthy food choices whenever you do eat. Also, proper nutrition becomes even more important when fasting, so you really want to address your food choices before you try fasting.
This includes minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthful fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, olives, butter, eggs, avocados, and nuts. It typically takes several weeks to shift to fat burning mode, but once you do, your cravings for unhealthy foods and carbs will automatically disappear. This is because you’re now actually able to burn your stored fat and don’t have to rely on new fast-burning carbs for fuel. Unfortunately, despite mounting evidence, many health practitioners are still reluctant to prescribe fasting to their patients. According to Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat:3
“Health care practitioners across the board are so afraid to recommend eating less because of the stigma involved in that recommendation, but we are more than happy to recommend that someone start going to the gym. If all I said was you need to get to the gym and start eating healthier, no one would have a problem with it. When the message is not only should you eat less, you could probably go without eating for 24 hours once or twice a week, suddenly it’s heresy.”
The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, modern science has confirmed there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, research presented at the 2011 annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans4 showed that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.
HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormone,” plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don’t overtrain and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training. Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:
Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health Improving biomarkers of disease
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone” Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage
Lowering triglyceride levels Preserving memory functioning and learning
Intermittent Fasting Is as Good or Better Than Continuous Calorie Restriction
According to Dr. Stephen Freedland, associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke University Medical Center, “undernutrition without malnutrition” is the only experimental approach that consistently improves survival in animals with cancer, as well as extends lifespan overall by as much as 30 percent.5 Interestingly enough, intermittent fasting appears to provide nearly identical health benefits without being as difficult to implement and maintain. It’s easier for most people to simply restrict their eating to a narrow window of time each day, opposed to dramatically decreasing their overall daily calorie intake.
Mark Mattson, senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has researched the health benefits of intermittent fasting, as well as the benefits of calorie restriction. According to Mattson,6 there are several theories to explain why fasting works:
“The one that we’ve studied a lot, and designed experiments to test, is the hypothesis that during the fasting period, cells are under a mild stress, and they respond to the stress adaptively by enhancing their ability to cope with stress and, maybe, to resist disease… There is considerable similarity between how cells respond to the stress of exercise and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.”
In one of his studies,7 overweight adults with moderate asthma lost eight percent of their body weight by cutting their calorie intake by 80 percent on alternate days for eight weeks. Markers of oxidative stress and inflammation also decreased, and asthma-related symptoms improved, along with several quality-of-life indicators.
More recently, Mattson and colleagues compared the effectiveness of intermittent fasting against continuous calorie restriction for weight loss, insulin sensitivity and other metabolic disease risk markers. The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2011,8 found that intermittent fasting was as effective as continuous calorie restriction for improving all of these issues, and slightly better for reducing insulin resistance. According to the authors:
“Both groups experienced comparable reductions in leptin, free androgen index, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and increases in sex hormone binding globulin, IGF binding proteins 1 and 2. Reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance were modest in both groups, but greater with IER [intermittent fasting] than with CER [continuous energy restriction].”
How Intermittent Fasting Benefits Your Brain
Your brain can also benefit from intermittent fasting. As reported in the featured article:
“Mattson has also researched the protective benefits of fasting to neurons. If you don’t eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain.”
Besides releasing ketones as a byproduct of burning fat, intermittent fasting also affects brain function by boosting production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Mattson’s research suggests that fasting every other day (restricting your meal on fasting days to about 600 calories), tends to boost BDNF by anywhere from 50 to 400 percent,9 depending on the brain region. BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. (The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.) So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue — and why the combination of intermittent fasting with high intensity exercise appears to be a particularly potent combination.
Give Intermittent Fasting a Try
If you’re ready to give intermittent fasting a try, consider skipping breakfast, make sure you stop eating and drinking anything but water three hours before you go to sleep, and restrict your eating to an 8-hour (or less) time frame every day. In the 6-8 hours that you do eat, have healthy protein, minimize your carbs like pasta, bread, and potatoes and exchange them for healthful fats like butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil and nuts — essentially the very fats the media and “experts” tell you to avoid.
This will help shift you from carb burning to fat burning mode. Once your body has made this shift, it is nothing short of magical as your cravings for sweets, and food in general, rapidly normalizes and your desire for sweets and junk food radically decreases if not disappears entirely.
Remember it takes a few weeks, and you have to do it gradually, but once you succeed and switch to fat burning mode, you’ll be easily able to fast for 18 hours and not feel hungry. The “hunger” most people feel is actually cravings for sugar, and these will disappear, as if by magic, once you successfully shift over to burning fat instead.
Another phenomenal side effect/benefit that occurs is that you will radically improve the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Supporting healthy gut bacteria, which actually outnumber your cells 10 to one, is one of the most important things you can do to improve your immune system so you won’t get sick, or get coughs, colds and flus. You will sleep better, have more energy, have increased mental clarity and concentrate better. Essentially every aspect of your health will improve as your gut flora becomes balanced.
Based on my own phenomenal experience with intermittent fasting, I believe it’s one of the most powerful ways to shift your body into fat burning mode and improve a wide variety of biomarkers for disease. The effects can be further magnified by exercising while in a fasted state. For more information on that, please see my previous article High-Intensity Interval Training and Intermittent Fasting – A Winning Combo.
Clearly, it’s another powerful tool in your box to help you and your family take control of your health, and an excellent way to take your fitness to the next level.

Hi RT
I think you have misunderstood. Poor OH just muttered ‘I’d fade away if I only had one meal every day’ 🙁
He has one meal at 6.30 or 7pm on fast days. About 400 cals. A bit of fish and salad usually. (Last night it was salmon, lettuce, carrot, fennel, chilli, mango, orange, red onion and a dash of soy)
On other days he judges what he can eat by his morning bloodsugar results. As we have been indulging a bit, and we are holidaying in a wine region, it has been higher some days, so he skips breakfast, and eats and drinks more moderately. Usually one very light, fast style dinner, but with a healthy dessert and one normal. He does not seem to be able to get away with cheating as much as me. Both of us eat amazingly little now compared with pre 5:2. And feel good about it. I really don’t fancy pigging out any more.

Amazon, well done on tossing the temptation. I have to do that too. We have ham and turkey we brought with us and I can’t see us having enough eating sessions to consume it before it is past its ‘use by’. We have only eaten out once on the holiday, knowing the food we prepare is tastier, healthier and cheaper. We are not angels, just know it really is a matter of life or death choosing to eat wisely.

Good luck getting back into the swing folks. Cheers P

Our posts crossed Nama! You are dead right about waking the ‘hunger monster’. It is SO much easier not to eat as long as possible. These days, though, as I’m maintaining, I eat something small at 2.30 -3 as I know hunger comes in 3-4 hour cycles. I am much less cranky when preparing dinner if I do. OH seems to retain his placid nature without eating.

The other day I had a very small hard boiled egg, with pepper, wrapped in a couple of large lettuce leaves. Heaven! And sustaining.

Enjoy your break Nama, Bay and Jojo and anyone else lucky enough to get away. More music awaits ….. P

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts”, RT?
You sound like a politician! 🙄

We are constantly astounded that we didn’t realize we were simply eating too much. How embarrassing! 😥

Saw an incredibly obese young woman yesterday, trying to squeeze her fat into a theatre seat. Previously, I would have thought she had a medical problem. Now I know she is a sad victim of overeating. No matter what the other conditions, her input is just too great for her needs. I’d love to be able to help her. So sad. P

Hello fast(ing) friends everywhere:
AO, Emel and RT South Australia, Nama in Victoria, Bay in ACT, Purple in NSW; Wiwi and Barata in NZ; Jojo, HappyNow, Amazon, Hermaj, Lizzy, Weemam, Tartan lass and Smiffy in UK and SAMM, Ply and Lori_PA in Nth America. Welcome Sammhopp – don’t know where you’re from.

Jojo, glad to hear your daughter is improving – hope you both enjoy the spa.

Emel, sending positive vibes for tomorrow. Good that your sister can be with you. Second the recommendation to accept all drugs offered 😉

RT thanks for the information to refresh the sc. basis of our chosen WOL.

AO, hope parting with the puppies isn’t too hard.

Purple, have fun at the folk festival.

Bay, enjoy the golf.

Lovely sunny day here too Nama. House now quiet after family gone home. OH retreated to the study to test the maths of some new thoughts on the topic he’s been researching for a publication.

Not too many leftovers now in the fridge and have planned meals to use them sensibly. Weighed myself on Boxing Day morning 🙁 but this morning 0.5kg of that had already disappeared with no fasting, just moderate eating.

Have a wonderful day all and keep up the good work.

RT and Purple, the quote in question reminds me of a favourite of mine from the Marigold Hotel movie: ” It will all be OK in the end and if it isn’t OK, then it isn’t the end! ” think that’s it. Can’t wait for the sequel, added bonus of Richard Gere (sigh)!

Laughing again at Saggy Baggy Wiwi! Such a witty group of people on this thread.(sorry Wiwi)

Easy to see I am having a lazy morning….actually recovering from 1 hr walk, Jojo will be pleased with me!