I’ve been following the 5:2 plan since January. I’ve done two fasts (500 calories) two days a week every week except one, when I was travelling and only manged one fast day. Fast days are pretty easy for me now (apart for the dreadful bone-sucking cold!), I have all my calories as one evening meal and excercise on almost every fast day.

On non-fast days I’m pretty good at sticking to within 100 calories of a TDEE of 1,700; there is normally one day a week when I will have over 2,000 calories, the extra calories being mostly from alchol :-(. This TDEE is high based soley on my weight and height but a few years ago when I was training for endurance sport I had my calorie requirements looked at on an aeroscan machine and that gave me a TDEE of 1,800 – I deducted 100 for my increased age and the fact I’m no longer doing endurance sport to come up with 1,700.

I excercise between 5 and 7 days a week, most weeks hitting at least six days. I do a mix of cardio, weights and yoga and I don’t add my calories burned onto my calorie allowance for the day (which is the other reason that it’s high and I’m happy to have 100 calories or so leeway).

Before the diet I was the dictionaty definition of skinny-fat. I’m small framed was still mostly wearing a UK size 8, sometimes buying a 10 and my BMI was safely within the normal range; but my body fat percentage was at 32 and my waist/height ratio was on the cusp of being high enough to be an indicator for all sorts of health nasties. I’ve had great results, losing 7.2 kg so far which is 12% of my body weight. Through some nifty maths and my posh scales, I’ve also been able to calculate that I’ve lost 6.14 kg of fat. I’m now very near my goal which is 50kg and less than 25% body fat.

I’m nervous of transitioning to the the maintenance regieme for a couple of reasons. The first is terribly superficial, but I still have some belly fat that I’d like to lose for purely aesthetic reasons and I’m worried that I’ll stop losing fat if I switch to 6:1. The second is that becuase I’m not abosolutely comitted to eating at my TDEE on non-fast days and I normally have one blow-out a week I’m worried that one fast a week won’t be enough to maintain my target weight. I should note that I’m not really willing to commit to sticking more rigerously to my TDEE because I don’t believe that’s sustainable as a lifestyle, and my blowouts are unavaoidable (a dinner party with three courses and three or four glasses of wine on a weekend, a brunch to celebrate someone’s birthday etc…). I’m also concerned that one I do shift to one day a week fasting, it might be hard to reintroduce a second day.

Thank you for reasding my 5:2 life story(!); does anyone have and advice about moving to the maintenance regieme?

Thanks for the advice everyone!