Just keep going. You are coping with a change in lifestyle. Be kind to yourself and just do what you can. Well done for starting. It does get easier. There are support groups out there. Just google 5:2

I find it useful to focus on casseroles as a main course with salads as a starter (when I have a starter) and full fat plain yoghurt as my dessert. I make enormous batches of 3 dishes: ratatouille, curry and chili. I am vegetarian but it is actually easier for meat eaters. I freeze the majority and eat them in turn with other things for occasional variety.
For the curry just fry an onion with as much garlic as you like and as much curry powder as you like (I like a lot of curry powder and garlic). After that I add courgettes, aubergine and red and green peppers. For the ratatouille I use 6 fresh tomatoes and for curry and chili. I use the biggest tin of tomatoes. Add one stock cube and some tomato paste or passata. That’s it. But add meat if you like. You can eat as much as you like of this on non-fast days. Have half a microwaved big potato too. You can vary the recipe as you like. It’s quick and easy and I always have a meal in store for every day of the week. This stops me falling off the wagon.

I am also a binger on non-fast days but what works for me is making sure my fast days are sustainable* and, more importantly, I do a 4:3 most weeks. This means I can binge but I still lose, albeit slowly.

I deliberately binge on feast days because a life time of dieting tells me that I am incapable of depriving myself for days on end. I know that there is talk that one’s metabolism does NOT fall if one eats less, but that has not been my experience. Dieting has always put me into a downward calorific spiral in order to keep losing weight, and I simply don’t have the willpower to sustain long term deprivation. I have been on 5:2 (or rather 4:3) for 4 months (the longest I’ve ever managed to sustain a diet), and it’s all down to the fact that for 4 days a week, I can eat my cakes and chocolates, and curries and spag bolognaise etc. The way of eating is very sustainable for a piggy like me and I would feel quite comfortable spending the rest of my life doing it.

*(I eat no breakfast; have two boiled eggs for lunch to take the edge off my hunger; and a big plate of curry vegetable soup at night, which wipes out any hunger and ensures I don’t go to bed feeling headachey and insomniac -ified.)

I am a craver/feaster/emotional eater. And I tend to binge. BUT – I found it helpful to prepare my 3 meals (for non-fasting days) a day in advance and to store them in a food containers in the fridge – and I label them. That way I have my own “boxes of food ready” and I am not allowed to add. I also have a big bowl on my kitchen counter into which I place during the day tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, avocado, banana, tangerines, etc, and I pick from there the veggies to complete my main dishes or fruit as my next snack. I also place nuts on a small dish or a piece of a dry fruit. You can cut up celery stalks in advance, place them in a tall glass and snack on them dipped in a hummus or tehini. I can safely “binge” on these.