Hello everyone,

Firstly, I hope any of you who decided to read my post are doing well both generally and on 5:2. This has always been a great community, hence why I am back on here again on my 5th or 6th attempt at fasting.

In a nutshell, I did 4:3 for 4 months back in 2013/14 and successfully lost 10lbs. I got pregnant, had my baby boy, and came out at the other side 6lbs heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight. Cue return to work, office cakes, birthdays, and one saboteur colleague, and I found myself 11lbs heavier than pre-pregnancy weight. I tried to fast a few times since then and didn’t have the endurance, either in terms of my willpower or indeed my desire to really want to do it. I knew I should do it, but I don’t think that knowledge outweighed my desire to eat whatever and whenever I wanted. So inevitably I gave up and was doing nothing about that additional weight, apart from adding to it slowly.

So here I am, I don’t know what attempt this is (5th or 6th maybe) and I am on my 4th fast day. I may turn out to be a complete sh*t talker if I can’t see this through, but I hope this time that I am approaching it in the right way, with a different attitude to before.

Firstly, my motivation for wanting to lose the weight is different to any time I have tried to do 5:2 before. Previously it was about getting into smaller jeans and getting rid of my belly pouch as fast as possible. To a degree I still want the smaller jeans, but having had a baby and not being the biggest gym fanatic, I think the belly pouch is always going to be a part of my life. Post-pregnancy stretched skin has seen to that! But I’m ok with it. My motivator now is wanting to try for another baby this year, but not wanting to embark on that journey again whist still carrying additional weight from baby #1. My bump was huge when I carried my son (who was 9lbs 2oz at birth), and towards the end of the pregnancy my body really struggled to carry my weight and walking was very painful. I’m not very big, but I have an issue with being too flexible, which was very much exacerbated by the pregnancy. So in preparation for round 2, I want to be in better shape. My goal is to lose a total of up to 18lbs, which should actually take me to 7lbs less than my pre-pregnancy weight, which was my original goal weight when I started fasting 4 years ago.

Secondly, I am not doing 4:3. I am doing 5:2. I don’t need to see weight loss at a rapid rate, so I won’t put the pressure on myself to do 3 days. I have tried that during my more recent attempts and I struggled to do it. So I will do 5:2 and be appreciative of what results I see, even if they are slower. Progress is progress, and I feel that allowing myself 5 non-fast days will make this way of life much easier to stick with. So far so good anyway 🙂

Thirdly, and I think finally, I am trying to use this attempt at fasting as an education. I am in week 2, and I have allowed myself to do whatever I want on non-fast days. I’m not counting calories or measuring TDEE. This is because I want to learn from my habits of old. I want to see the difference in how my body feels between eating on a fast day, and eating the copious amounts of crap and large portion sizes which I allow myself on non-fast days. I hope that this will eventually change my habits generally, such that non-fast days in the future will be much more balanced, without feeling like deprivation of any sort. This has been an interesting experiment so far, but I don’t think I have been doing it long enough to really give any meaningful input here. So I will come back to this later (if I am still here later! No no, I WILL be here.)

Having waffled on to the extent that I have so far, I can happily say that 3 fast days in (today is fast day 4), I am 2 lbs down, 1.5 of which I have calculated to be body fat. I have one of those bathroom scales that measures weight, body fat, water and BMI, and although I know that the numbers may not be 100% accurate, the loss each week should be. So I am quite happy about that.

For those that may be interested, my preferred method of fasting is to save all of my calories for an evening meal. I have found in the past that eating anything during the day kick starts my appetite, which I then have to put up with all day. Only eating one meal in the evening is much easier for me, and the meal is bigger and more satisfying. I drink water and tea (with skimmed milk and sweeteners) during the day. I do suffer with headaches on fast days at times, but this hasn’t made me abandon a fast just yet.

Sorry this was such a long post! I didn’t set out for it to be, but there we are. I would love to hear from any of you, whether your journey is anything like mine or not. We are all in it together!

Thanks for reading guys. Happy Fasting 🙂

Hey fastnfeast

I love your username! I used to call non fast days “feast” days when I first started doing 4:3. There was something so satisfying about using the word feast when talking about my new eating regime lol.

I’m glad you could relate to my post. I sometimes wonder if my inner ramblings are a nonsense to anyone else but it’s a comfort to know that a fellow 5:2er shares my view. Well done to you too for doing 5:2 for as long as you have!

I thought I would report back on what I feel is my first educational observation since starting to fast again. I use the term observation, rather than lesson, because I don’t yet know exactly what I have learned – I just know that I can see a pattern emerging and I need to understand why that is so. So here goes.

When I fast, I physically feel ok. I do feel pangs and what not, but I feel a contentment in my torso area. That might sound weird, but I am habitually an over-eater. So to end a fast day without that uncomfortable feeling of over fullness, as I normally do ever other day, has been really quite satisfying.

Today was a non fast day, and I shocked myself by realising two thirds of the way down my bowl of morning cereal that I was full. It was my usual portion size that I can usually eat without a problem. But I was full. So I threw the rest away – a small personal victory over my normal habit of eating it all I spite of feeling full.

But during the day, I kept having the feeling of wanting to eat, but still feeling full up. I noticed that all day, I wanted food. But my body didn’t. My stomach was satisfied, but my brain was not. It was ME that wanted to eat the big bag of crisps and haribo sweets, and chocolate buttons on the way home. My stomach was feeling that satisfied way (like I described above on a fast day) and that is when I should have stopped. But I want to keep eating. There is clearly something I enjoy so much about eating that I value it over physical comfort. Like this evening, I wasn’t hungry, but my husband was. So we BOTH ate a kebab and chips. But there was absolutely no biological demand from my tummy for that food. It was my brain that decided we were going to eat. And now as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I feel over full and bloated, and really rather uncomfortable.

So my observations being what they are, I wonder why I do it to myself? At this point in the day, where I realise that 50% of what I have eaten was not due to hunger, I feel that I did not enjoy my non fast day. I over did it. I don’t necessarily care about the scales at this very moment, but I do care about the fact that I am going to bed feeling like I have a sack of potatoes under my ribcage. And I don’t like it.

So what now? Apart from feeling like I want to fast tomorrow, just to get some relief from giving in to my brain’s demand for food, I suppose I should pause for a moment at that time when I feel physically full, and have a mental stand off with the part of my brain that gets gratification from eating. And hopefully walk away from that battle and be able to show myself that not eating those biscuits or chocolate or extra portion of dinner didn’t actually cause anything especially catastrophic to occur.

Does any of that even make sense? I hope so, or I have just lost out on an additional 30 minutes of sleeping time for nothing lol. Oh well, it’s off my chest anyhow.

Thanks again for your reply fastnfeast. 🙂

Just online looking into this theory of mine and found this article – sounds quite interesting.

http://nutritionwonderland.com/2009/06/understanding-bodies-serotonin-connection-between-food-and-mood/

Hi Guys,

Thank you so much for posting 🙂 I really love to hear from others. I hope you’re all doing well.

I’m sorry to say that I have fallen off the wagon again, and if I am totally honest i really feel trapped. What was supposed to be my 4th week of fasting was the week that mother nature arrived (hopefully not too much TMI, sorry folks ) and my drive and motivation and willpower from the previous weeks completely and utterly abandoned me. I felt like crap and just wanted to eat. Carbs, sugar, junk, all of it. So I allowed myself that week of not fasting, but I knew in my head that once I stopped I wouldn’t pick up again. And here I am 4 weeks later, with the few pounds I lost regained and feeling quite low about it. I never realised before now that I use food, particularly calorific foods, for just about any type and level of stress I have to endure day to day. Simply being a bit tired, or feeling like I have done a hard job makes me reach for something. Consequently I am teaching for biscuits, chocolate, fast food etc several times each day. It’s no wonder I have gained weight. How the hell does anyone maintain the willpower to battle through when your mind just pulls and pulls against you? It’s this stage that I feel like I can never overcome, like the withdrawal stage. It’s like it a going to have a hold over me forever.

Sorry guys I never want to post here and drag you guys down with me. I’m just feeling so chappy about my inability to see this through. I really don’t know how to help myself. It’s not as simple as “just get on with it” for me. There is so much more to it. It sounds pathetic really doesn’t it?

I am still definitely here on the thread, loving to see you guys post and hoping to draw inspiration from your journeys. X