@lulu912 Hi – it’s a sad fact that the less you have to lose the more difficult it is to lose it and you have only around 10lbs to lose. It’s also a sad fact that men lose weight faster than women. Sometimes life just ain’t fair!!

From what you are saying this is making you miserable and that is never a good thing, It actually looks like you are trying TOO hard and are restricting yourself unnecessarily on your non fast days.

Have you calculated your BMR and TDEE? You can do that here http://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

Fast days don’t need to be ‘miserable’ – you can eat 3 small meals throughout the 24 hours if it makes it easier and it’s surprising just how much you can eat for 500 calories if you stick to low calorie foods like veg and some protein. It takes a little while to get used to having less food on the 2 days but tell yourself – there’s always tomorrow.

Why do you only have one day when you can eat cake? On your non fast days you can eat WHATEVER you like, just not HOW MUCH you like. Stay somewhere between your BMR and TDEE on those days and keep exercising.

Don’t be so hard on yourself and give it time. If you have a continual weekly calorie deficit then you WILL lose that weight.

xx

Hi. I’ve been doing the 5:2 for about 14 weeks now. I was 10 stone, 3 or 4 llbs when I started and I’ve just been hovering at the 10 stone/10 stone 1lb mark the whole time and only ever gone below 10 stone once or twice then straight back up again. My target weight was 9 and a half stone which I should have reached at the end of April! Been loyal to this diet and really believed in it, only one I’ve ever stuck to. Been doing one ‘proper’ fast day and one 2 till 2 a week.
However, I’m 50, postmenopausal and have/had mild fatty liver disease (liver function test normal now though) and high cholesterol at 8.4 which has gone UP since I started this diet, not down! Starting to get fed up now as my brother has lost several pounds in only five weeks and I’m wondering what’s different about my body that I can’t lose anything on what seemed to be a foolproof diet! I don’t FEEL like I’ve overeaten on non-fast days or anything. Does fatty liver or cholesterol or age or menopause make it harder to lose weight? Can anyone give me any hope or advice on this as I really don’t want to give up! I thought it would improve my metabolism etc. Are there any underlying medical reasons why this might not work for some people?

angie, nothing works for everyone, but I still think there’s hope that 5:2 could work for you. I’m a 57 year old female, post-menopausal, with multiple medical problems, and have lost 40 pounds in 40 weeks with 5:2 plus increasing my walking to 10,000 steps per day.

It probably really is necessary to do two proper fasting days per week in order to lose weight, people do 6:1 to maintain.

One thing that can help is to keep a detailed food diary for a week, then sit down and figure out the calories and analyze it for anything you might want to change.

One tip I have is to figure out the TDEE for your target weight, instead of for the weight you are now, and use the non-fasting days as an opportunity for learning to find satisfying ways to eat at that number of calories per day. To be on the safe side I pick the TDEE for one activity lower than what I think I qualify for.

I hope some of this helps.

Amy:

I am familiar with 2-to-2 and have posted on it before. My posts warn that if you don’t count your calories for breakfast and lunch, and late lunch and dinner (and snacks?), you can easily eat your TDEE each of the two days and have no calorie restriction at all in your diet despite ‘fasting’ for 24 hours. Some people actually eat 500 cal. during the 24 and end up eating more than their TDEEs. Here are my thoughts on calorie restriction v. fasting: http://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/52-calorie-restriction-v-fasting-for-newbies/

In any event, the 2-to-2, while in the book(s), is not 5:2. It is given as an option to 5:2 for those unable or unwilling to do 5:2. But my observation is that many people choose 2-to-2 so they can eat more, not less, on their diet.

But, as they say, whatever works. In angie’s case, it does not seem to be working.

angie1, you are absolutely right, Fast Diet does not ask for calorie counting or sticking to the TDEE on non-fast days. It asks for sensible eating but unrestricted.

Naturally, if you bury your head every day in 10,000 kcal of fast food, no amount of fasting can counteract that. However, if you are sensible and your body allows fasting then 5:2 will work. I, for example, do not count calories on the whole. I am a type II diabetic and without calorie counting but with ice cream I reduced my body weight by 8 or 9 kg since January and got my blood sugar from poorly controlled to well controlled.
When I say “no calorie counting” I actually lie. From time to time I keep a food diary because bad habits creep in. It allows me to check if I am still sensible in my eating, if treats are treats and not a daily habit and it gives me a rough idea what I am eating. Because, you see, unlike simcoluv, I do not believe that a calorie is a calorie, the human metabolism a set of scale that measures input and output or that the first law of thermodynamics applies.
I believe, no, wrong again, I KNOW that human metabolism is very complicated, that it is regulated by a huge number of hormones, some of them quite surprising, and that our bodies respond to the amount, quality and type of food we put in. Our bodies can downregulate BMR if you loose weight, it can turn the heating up when excess fuel needs to be burned, it can fail in all this if your try to run on unsuitable fuel.

The big problem is trying to find out what works for you. Have you tried to change from the normal high carb diet to a low carb high fat diet? Tried a low glycaemic load approach? Kept a food diary to see if you have a secret bad habit that ruins all your efforts, like three glasses of wine every evening? Have you tried to go zero calories during your 2:2 fast? When you say “healthy foods” are you talking about low fat and artificial sweeteners? ‘Cause it turns out they’re not that healthy…
If you have done all that and nothing works, there are still two options: see your doctor and get checked for common metabolic diseases, pre-diabetes and underactive thyroid first and foremost. And if you are healthy, maybe, just maybe, 5:2 is just not the right approach for you in weight loss terms. It still has other health benefits though.

simcoluv

“But the fact is, for a majority of people, a calorie is a calorie. There are some people, however, that have very unusual metabolisms, whether as a result of drug use, disease or genetics.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpllomiDMX0

To count calories, use a program or app. Many use http://www.myfitnesspal.com/. I like fatsecret.com mostly because that is what I started using and have entered lots of recipes in it. Once you get going, it is quite quick to use.

At the beginning I was in similar situation as you. Besides maintining a healthy diet and doing sports it’s worth it to speed up your metabolism naturally as well. My friend who lives in Italy tried green coffee extract, exactly this one: http://caffeperdimagrire.it/caffe-verde/ . She’s delighted and she claims that green coffee extract helped her. I’m not sure if these all weight loss boosters really work. What do you think about that?