Hi Orly:

What do you mean by ‘strictly adhering’ to 5:2. That would be 500 cal or less twice a week, and TDEE or less the remaining five days a week.

What is your TDEE?

The fact you have lost three pounds would indicate it is working – the average weight loss for a woman on 5:2 is a little less than a pound a week. But it sounds like you want to lose weight faster?

As you probably know, exercise does not help much with weight loss and sometimes actually slows weight loss.

My only suggestion would be to eat less.

Here are some tips that explain TDEE, the possible effects of exercise, and the general weight loss expectations you could have using 5:2: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

Good Luck!

Hi Orly,
Are there any other signs, besides what your scale says, that your health has improved over the last 6 weeks? Think of scales as always + or – 2 kg as there are a lot of variables such as food in your gut and water levels in your body.

If you want to keep on with 5:2, work on making it sustainable in your life, so that it isn’t so frustrating if it is not working as you expect.

Maybe on your non-fasting days you could eat normal meals. Sensible portions and healthy, but enough so that you don’t feel you are on a diet those days. Try not to count calories.

Then just concentrate on making your fast days work.

I was lucky, I knew at the end of my first fast day that 5:2 would suit me. I felt really good having a break from eating, and the morning after was even better. Breakfast was wonderful! But because I have a chronic illness I am extremely limited in how active I can be and my rate of loss was similar to yours. I lost about a kilo a month. But slow and steady won the race and I am now at the lower end of my healthy weight range and, thanks to 5:2, I am staying there.

I do hope you can make 5:2 work in your life because the rewards are so great. Best wishes.

PS Have you heard of the whoosh effect? http://100down.org/the-whoosh-effect/

@orly. Your calculated TDEE is 2390??? Really? You are either a top athlete doing lots of training every day or you weigh about 250 pounds. Not trying to be rude but if that TDEE is correct that’s the two options. Im a 57 yo male, 178cm tall 154 pounds and my TDEE is 2100, and I think that’s probably a little high. Its probably closer to 1900. Walking is good but it wont put on lean mass, it will however conserve what you have. Resistance training will put on lean mass but unless you are continually upping your weights it is just conserving what you have. Personally I think at 55 just conserving what you have is the better option. I regularly ride my bike and Im happy with conservation rather than putting on more lean mass.

People seem to have a very distorted view of what HIIT is. HIIT is a completely anaerobic activity that is conducted at 100% effort. It is a very unpleasant experience that can only be sustained for about 30-40 seconds max. I end my rides with an all out 100% effort for the last 1km of my ride. I am in extreme physical distress by the end of that 1km. If you can do this fantastic but don’t worry if you cant. If your goal is weight loss then a brisk walk is fantastic because as a percentage this is when the most fat is burnt compared to glucose and glycogen.

If you are losing weight then you are doing everything correctly. On average I only lost 1 pound per week. It took me a year to lose my 48 pounds.

Hi Orly:

I explain my comment on exercise in this post: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/exercise-is-dangerous-for-your-diet/

This diet works. You just have to do it. And quick weight loss, while the dream of everyone, is just a dream. It takes a long time to lose a lot of weight. For 50 pounds, figure at least a year or more.

You will read about some people on this and many other diets that begin by losing a lot of weight fast. But then you don’t hear from them again, because when that initial quick water weight loss rate goes down, they quit the diet and go back to where they were.

The quickest way to lose the most weight as fast as possible is simply to not eat. The average weight loss for people water fasting only is between 3/4 and one pound per day. (Your TDEE will give you an idea of how much you can reasonably expect to lose each day when water fasting.) The minute you start eating, that rate declines. So how much you eat pretty well sets how much you gain, or lose. No rocket science involved.

Just keep on with 5:2, and although no one wants to hear it, if you want to lose weight faster, eat less.

Good Luck!

Hi, Orly. Your’s is a curious situation.
In my opinion, your TDEE is very high. When you calculated it, did you input your current weight or the weight you would like to be after losing 50 pounds? Try again with the latter. My TDEE, to maintain my current weight, is 1450. sometimes I get to a place where my weight goes up and stays there, despite Fast Days. Then I have to count my calories, even on Slow Days, to see where the extra calories came from. As for counting calories on Fast Days, I made up recipe cards of our favorite meals with all the calories totaled up for every ingredient. That way I really know what I’m eating.
If you don’t ever count calories, I’m not sure how you can find out how to lose more weight faster. For me, part of Fasting is knowing the nutritional value of what you eat.
Good luck to you.

@orly. What fasting me is suggesting is that if you want to use those BMI calculators that you should enter the weight you ideally want to be at some time into the future rather than the eight you are currently. So if you are 70kg and you want to be 60kg. Put 60 kg into the BMI calculator to give you your TDEE.

This is my personal take on the whole weight loss concept, so please take of leave the information at your pleasure. I do not count calories at all. I do not find it necessary. Others swear by it. Whatever works for you. The concept of calories in/calories out CICO is at best a very crude estimate. At worse it is pointless. The foods that you eat alter the calories that you need from a metabolic standpoint. Almonds and other nuts for example are known to increase your metabolic rate. So eating 1000 calories of almonds will have a different effect to eating 1000 calories of chocolate donuts.

At the end of the day you must run a calorific deficit to lose weight. How you choose to do that is up to you. IF as opposed to continuous caloric deficit are two ways. lets say you need 2000 cal per day. Lets say you want to run a 2000 calorie deficit for the week. With IF you eat normally for say 6 days and fast with zero intake on the 7th day. You’ve run a 2000 calorie deficit and achieved this using IF. Alternately you could eat 1714 calories per day and also achieve a 2000 calorie deficit for the week. Personally I believe continued caloric deficit doesn’t work. IF does work, so I water fast once per week and have been doing so for over 3 1/2 years now. My weight is usually within 2 pounds of my target weight of 154 pounds. All this without counting calories at all.

Having said that there are certain foods that I will not touch. For me those foods are anything that is processed grain based and SUGAR. So no bread pasta biscuits rice etc. I eat almonds like other people are addicted to chocolate. It does not adversely affect me. Im not advocating that you do this, just that it works for me. You need to find your “poison” food and then eliminate it.

Good luck.

@orly77 – Some thoughts.

1) You don’t mention what you are doing on fast days. While the 5:2 diet does allow for people to eat some on fast days, if a person eats some after waking up and then later in the day, it isn’t a true fast and a lot of the benefits of fasting are lost. The more hours spent without eating anything the bigger the impact.

2) Six weeks is a short time period and our weight is a range. It is completely possible the 0.5lb/week figure doesn’t reflect what is really happening. Often it is better to use other indicators like waist size to determine is fat is being lost.

3) Personal trainers typically aren’t good for weight loss. Typically they are young and don’t really understand the problems. Often they have very weak nutritional backgrounds and even recommend absurd things like eating protein right after a workout. You might want to check out Brad Pilon’s book “How Much Protein” as he used to work in the supplement world. Lots of red flags around depending on personal trainers.

4) Let’s assume you are only losing 0.5lbs a week. If that is all fat that is a huge amount over a year or 26 lbs. It is doubtful that you put the fat on that fast. What I don’t get is the attitude that it has to come off fast. It takes years and even decades to put it on, it can take years to take it off, at least in a healthy fashion.

5) You are taking medication. Wow that can mess everything up when it comes to weight loss.

6) You seem to put too much faith in calorie counting. You are really just making estimates off of estimates. Outside of a lab it isn’t really possible to do it accurately. Even companies that produce food products are often off by 15% to 25% when their products are tested and these companies have much better equipment and processes than an individual could ever have. Additionally figures like 3500 kcal / lb of fat are also just estimates and not accurate.

7) You state you are in poor physical shape as you have metabolic issues and 50 pounds to loss. Fat is metabolically active but largely works against losing weight. Insulin resistance is much, much worse and will severely impede fat loss. I used to be pre-diabetic myself and know first hand how bad my physical condition was at that point.

8) You are working out and that is very good. However the overall view I get from your post is an extreme lack of patience. Working out becomes effective over years, not weeks or even months in most cases. If you want to see the benefits you have to stick with it. Additionally while you might think 3 to 5 miles a day is a lot of walking, it isn’t really that much. I had two days this week that my steps were over 20,000 and that isn’t that much. Three HIIT workouts a week is great if you really push yourself to your very limits. If you don’t push extremely hard during the bursts it isn’t as effective. Weight training is really good and you have a personal trainer to help with that. If you are combining a HIIT working with weight lifting in a day then you aren’t doing either one very effectively. HIIT is simply too hard if it is done right as well as weight training.

There are likely many other possible issues and I don’t know which ones really apply to you. However you made a statement implying it is wrong to blame the person trying to lose the weight. That is wrong because that is the only person to blame. No one forces us to gain fat and only we can lose our own fat. We are the only ones that can be blamed for our own fat. Losing the fat is very difficult and takes a lot of hard work for long periods of time.

Just to clarify … with working out, when I say it isn’t a lot I mean in terms of losing weight. There is a lot of energy in a single food calorie. Exercise has massive benefits and I believe it should be done, but it can really confuse the scale. Losing weight isn’t a major strength of exercise, at least directly.

So walking 5 miles can help with conditioning, but in terms of calories not so much. In terms of increasing insulin sensitivity, probably a lot more. So indirectly it will help over time.

@vin7 … way to go … Always someone trying to push some junk and sucker one out of money!

@dykask. ha ha ha. What makes you think @vin7 isn’t legitimate? Is it because he’s offering a magic potion for weight loss? I actually prefer it when the moderators don’t remove those posts because it gives real forum members the opportunity to respond and warn newbies to the site that magic potions don’t exist.

Orly 77 – i had another thought. If you are looking for quicker weight loss and need to try and resolve pre-diabetes you could try the Blood Sugar Diet. It is a sister diet to 5:2 and involves eating 800 cals per day for 8 weeks. Worth checking out as there are good results from it and you can continue with 5:2 afterwards.