Hi Tony,

As someone who has been doing 5:2 for over 10 years, hates counting calories, can’t stand the vast majority of veg, eats to live instead of the other way around and finds cooking a complete bore perhaps I can help you out a bit. I have a more even approach to meal sizes across the day than your good self, so what I suggest won’t be perfect for you at all, but perhaps it will give you some sort of steer that may help. I do eat loads of fruit – I don’t know if that will work for you.

With 5:2 the only days that calorie counting matters are the “2” so that’s all I’m going to mention.

Over the last 8 months I have changed things slightly due to some information I got about my gut biome via the Zoe App, but for the 9.75 years before that my meal plans for the two fast days were:

Breakfast both days: Porridge with 30g oats, 75g semi skimmed milk, 75g water, 40g blueberries and a sweetener of some sort – maybe maple syrup or agave syrup.

Lunch both days: a couple of pieces of medium size fruit, such as 2 kiwis, or an apple and pear, or a small bowl of strawberries.

Dinner had 2 options:

a) Half a can of baked beans on 1 slice of unbuttered toast with 2 rashers of back bacon with a diet coke, or
b) Two poached eggs on two slice of unbuttered toast with a diet coke

a) and b) both also room for an apple later in the evening.

I needed the coke to give me some additional flavour, but on fast days water, black coffee, black tea and any sort of green tea or herbal tea are absolutely fine as they are calorie free. Staying busy on fast days also really helps to ignore the waves of hunger which tend to appear and then disappear from time to time.

I found an online calorie counter 10 years ago which gave the above meals a 600 cal total.

Using the above approach I lost 17 kg in 6 months and largely kept it off, albeit with a few ups and downs and some plateauing several times during those first 6 months.

I only changed things 8 months ago after signing up to the Zoe app and its associated free podcasts which made it clear that not all calories are equal by any means, that certain foods are likely to make you want to eat more later on and that avoiding ultra processed food is a very good idea, and that you also want to avoid high blood sugar spikes or high blood fat spikes. Apart from the blood sugar thing – and associated diabetes risk which my GP had said I was at risk of developing back in 2012 – that was all news to me.

Since then I’ve increased my intake of nuts and seeds massively and hardly ever have bacon or sausages any more. A 3 egg cheese or ham omelette with mixed herbs has now taken over as my dinner on fast days. I’ve swapped frozen mixed berries in for the blueberries in my porridge, and got rid of the maple/agave syrup, replacing them with a couple of dashes of All Spice instead which gives a nice flavour.

As a consequence of following the Zoe advice I’ve since lost another 1.5kg and kept it off so far. The Zoe advice is very person specific – so what has worked for me won’t necessarily work for anyone else.

I hope at least some of the above helps you.

You may also find these two links useful:

1) https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/
2) https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/warnings-to-newbies/

Very best of luck with it.

Hi.

Try ZOE: Personalised Nutrition and the sister app ZOE Health Study.

“joinzoe.com” will get you there in a browser. Its podcasts are all free but the personalised program is something you have to pay for – either a 3, 6 or annual membership from memory. Not cheap but very interesting results.

Hope this enables you to find them.

All the best.