La Chubster – another good advice post, I like the broth idea especially.

I haven’t been eating on fasting days either. I think it is typically easier. However the holiday feasting as really twisted my eating patterns. So I’ll see if I can keep it up. The fasts were getting easy, but now they are a bit harder again.

Hi Karen, I’m with you. Once I eat my appetite develops. I have gone 60 hours without eating before. Still a wimp with fasting but I’m also trying to build some muscle.

Hi I am starting my diet, I think eating on my fast days would make me feel worse so I am deciding not to eat will this help? Has anyone not eaten on their fast days and eat normal the other days and lost weight?

Hey, SixtyPlus. So interesting to read your entry because I’ve been IFing for a little more than a year now and I have also recently realized that I haven’t had the colds, URIs and bronchitis that generally plague me either.

I’m asthmatic so I am easily triggered by colds, etc. In addition, I’m on medication that makes me, ironically, even more susceptible to whatever I’m exposed to. So it’s been heaven.

I don’t really know what, specifically, to attribute it to, but I think it’s interesting that we are both *fasting* IFers.

Counteyh, I don’t eat at all on my FDs. And I do them back-to-back so that’s some 60 hours with just water (in the form of unsweetened or flavored iced tea). It’s become part of my pattern and my body puts up no resistance to it. In fact, I think it straightens out any little injudicious thing I’ve eaten on a food day.

As for my food days, I don’t think I’d say I eat “normally”. “Normally”, for me, isn’t normal. I don’t count calories but I have a whole list of foods I won’t eat because they trigger worse eating for me. Those things include processed foods with ingredients I can’t control and don’t particularly trust, any form of sugar including fruit, starchy vegetables and grains. …even the “healthy” whole grains. I LOVE them AND I’m a baker so I use them all the time but they just cause binging for me so I don’t eat them.

Other than that, if I prepare something myself avoiding my trigger foods, I’ll eat it and enjoy as much of it as I want.

I’m going to be 70 very soon so my metabolism is slow. So is my fat burning (I also don’t weigh myself so I have no idea what I weigh). BUT it is steady. And it is quite remarkable compared to any other approach I’ve used — and I’ve been very overweight since I started kindergarten. This approach has gotten me from size 22 jeans down to size 8s since Christmas 2015.

Additionally, I think it’s worth noting that I’ve never followed a “diet” for a whole year before. This way of eating isn’t even particularly challenging for me. I’m rewarded every day by feeling so much better! One day I suppose I’ll get down to a lean healthy body. I doubt I’d want to change how I now eat even then.

Hello all,
This is my first post to the forums – although I started with IF back in 2016. I ‘fell off the wagon’ for a while but I’m back on board again now : )

I’m another one who has found ‘no food’ easier than ‘some food’ on fast days. In the past I was the person in my household who had to have his breakfast. No.1 priority in the morning was a (big) bowl of cereal… even when I was leaving home early on business – maybe a 5.30am rise – I’d still have a bowl of cereal before I left!

When I started 5:2 I would have a small breakfast, skip lunch and have one of Mimi Spencers excellent suggestions for a low cal dinner. However, I did find that the small breakfast activated my appetite, made me visually aware of all those things in the kitchen cupboards, and left me wanting food. I can’t remember how it started to be honest, but there were a few occasions where I was away on business and had to ‘get up and go’ without breakfast. I found I survived : ) I then tried skipping breakfast and lunch on my FD’s – and found it easier than I thought it would be. That’s what I now do regularly – a 24 hour, no food, drinks only day. And I don’t find it too difficult.

There’s no calorie counting – other than watching that one evening meal doesn’t grow beyond the recipe / calorie suggestion – typically about 300 – 350 calories. I drink mainly water, but I do have a liking for milky coffee 🙂 I’ve cut that down to 2 cups a day on FD’s and much reduced milk (half fat) and a little sugar – they cost me about 80 calories each. I’m thinking I might try a full 36 hour fast sometime soon.

I don’t worry about calories during the non FD’s. I’m aware of my TDEE and I weigh myself in the same state / time the morning after each fast day. I enter the data in the tracker, watch the medium term trend and adjust my non FD consumption accordingly : )

I realise this may not work for others, but I’ve found a ‘no-food’ approach to FD’s works better for me.

Hi I have just joined this forum today, because I am feeling starving. I have heard that some people stay on this way of eating for life, and I am thinking, to feel starving 2 days a week for the rest of your life? But I guess the idea is to get it down to one day a week.

I lost a bit of weight at first but then I soon got into catching up the calories I had not eaten, so for example I raided the Xmas chocoates one Sunday. I didn’t lose any weight that week but at least I had stayed the same, but I started thinking, is it worth all this starvation just to stay the same weight?

Anyway I am persevering and I am not going to feel guilty about anything I eat on non fast days because I feel I deserve to eat whatever I want because I have starved myself for 2 days.

I am beginning to realize I can’t really do that as I am just going to stay the same weight and not lose any weight, and I really want to lose about 3 stone. I havn’t done any exercise at all recently, and the thought of exercising on fast days I don’t even entertain, I don’t feel I have the energy.

I am 58 years old and I feel tired quite a lot of the time, I can’t seem to make myself exercise. I think I am going to have to join the gym again even if it is only to go swimming 3 times a week, that cannot be that hard and I would get to relax in the sauna afterwards, but I am too mean to pay the gym membership, is is something like £350 for 3 months., this is £26.92 per week so £8.97 per swim. But I could do some of the other classes as well, for no more money.

Maybe I will re-join the ladies gym, I think this is about £45 a month if you pay monthly. There is a circuit there so you just go there for half an hour it is quite convenient and organised, but last time I found I just did not go and wasted loads of membership money as I was tied in for the whole year.

Anyway I think I will go to bed now, starving. Today I made myself a kind of veg stew/soup which I had for lunch, which was made with roasted squash and other left over roasted veg, and some carrots and onion, and in the evening I ate a piece of cold pre-cooked salmon with pepper on the top, then I ate some rocket/watercress/baby spinach salad out of the bag and later 4 cherry tomatoes and some cucumber.

I think I actually have lost a bit of weight I think my stomach is getting a bit smaller so I must just persevere. I think I need to try and cut out sugar on the non-fast days. God I am starving.

But, on a positive note, the starving is the burning of my fat and I guess there is just not any way around that, it is the price I pay for burning my fat. So rather than try and avoid feeling starving, I could try and welcome the feeling as something there is just no way around, but something I am doing for the benefit of my body. And simply look forward to my bowl of porridge tomorrow!

What I need are some tips on how not to over eat on the non-fast days, as my body seems to try to catch up. I even eat more on the day before a fast because I feel like I have to stock up in advance so I won’t feel as hungry the next day, but I don’t think it works like that, I will still feel just as hungry!

I am doing quite well on fast days, I find myself putting food to my mouth, and then remembering it is a fast day, and stopping. I have even spat food out of my mouth if it has got there before I have remembered. It’s just the other days I am not doing brilliantly., I seem to need to have hard and fast rules I have to stick to, and there arn’t any on non-fast days, so it is all cheese, chocs and bread and vegetables are not to be seen. (Although fruit does get eaten.)

I have got one of those special plates I could try, with portion sizes marked on it, but when I tried it before, I felt starving. But now maybe as I am used to starving it could work better for me.

Sorry it just feels quite hard at the moment, but my thought is, all I have to do is stick to the 2 days, and I feel I can do that. I just have to tweak the other days somehow, so that I lose more weight.

Hi jane and welcome:

One of the challenges you will have to overcome to be successful on 5:2 has to do with your language. You used the word ‘starving’ I don’t know how many times. But, of course, you are not starving. Actually, an overweight person can easily go two or more months without eating any food and still not be ‘starving’. So it is impossible for an overweight person to ‘starve’.

You may feel hungry. As diver said, if you eat a lot of sugar and other processed carbs like bread, rice, chips and cookies, you will feel hungry most of the time. That is why many gain weight – they eat processed carbs that make them hungry so they eat more processed carbs and the overeating gets them fat. You might consider eating meals high in fat and moderate in protein. If you start eating those kinds of meals, you will find you feel less and less hungry as time passes. And, if you ever progress to water fasting, you will notice that you won’t feel hungry even though you are eating nothing. That is because you will be well fed by the fat you are using for energy. The longest documented medically supervised water fast lasted for over one year, and the guy was never hungry (or starving).

Here is some information that might help you as you progress with 5:2: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

Good Luck!