Hi guys!

I’m in my fourth week of doing the 5:2, and it seems to be working (to my huge surprise!). I’ve been dieting and have had a negative body image since the age of 14. Basically, I’ve wasted 28 years of my life feeling bad about myself, yo-yo dieting and only gaining weight as a consequence…. No more of that!

I started the 5:2 after stumbling across Dr. Mosley’s documentary one night I was channel surfing. The arguments made a lot of sense to me, and I decided to give it a go. The first fast day was tough – I was starving (or craving? couldn’t really tell the difference) and had bad hunger pains that evening. But since then, things have gotten a lot easier. I try to only have a sensible dinner on fast days, no breakfast, lunch or snacks. All or nothing seems to work best for me, not constant grazing throughout the day (that is what brought me into this mess in the first place 🙂 ) I don’t really worry to much about counting calories either, because that leads me to become obsessive (been there, done that on other diets!) and overly focused on what I can’t have.

Now to the point of this post: over the past two weeks I’ve found that my appetite on food days is down considerably. I really do allow myself to eat what I want, but I find that I don’t want the foods I craved before. Go figure?!? I’ve had one incident of ordering a late night take-out pizza (small Italian), and I couldn’t even finish it. This weekend, I took my son (age 5) to the amusement park, and had a proper warm lunch (not fast food) in one of their restaurants. Before, I would finish my own food and then graze on what ever he left over (especially fries!). Now, I couldn’t even finish my own meal…. This is very weird to me – good, but weird.

Also, I don’t crave the things I used to crave any more. I’ve never been one for sodas and chocolate, but I loooooove savory stuff like pizza, fries, garlic bread, chips/crisps, etc. Now I crave crunchy, green apples and blueberries. And I can have as much as I like of that. Some food days I actually struggle to have three full, balanced “proper” meals, especially the days after fast days. I fast on Mondays and Thursdays, and on Sunday evenings – the third food day in a row – I’ve noticed that some of my old cravings seem to come sneaking back (but not remotely as strong as before). It’s like the fast days “reset” my appetite to normal, and then it takes a couple of days for my body to want to go back to it’s old ways.

I’m just absolutely blown away by this big change only a few weeks into eating according to the 5:2 plan.

Although I’m primarily doing this for medical reasons to see if it has any effect on blood sugar and hormones, I’ve also lost 2,5 kilos (almost 6 pounds) in three weeks. Yeay! I will keep on going, because this really seems to be working for me 🙂

Good luck to you, too, Carla 🙂

I’m hoping this loss of appetite doesn’t go away, but I’m quite prepared to get into more difficult periods every now and then (like with all diets). The all-or-nothing approach on fast days work better for me than small low-cal snacks and meals, because I simply tell myself that nothing except tea and water will touch my lips until dinner time. If I have one low-cal biscuit or one fruit, it’s very easy to have the rest of the box, too – and that kinda defeats the purpose 😉