“Burning” fat impliesa keto diet/ ketosis vice just weight loss. Is that your intention? If so, you may need to drive carb consumption to 20g or less per day until your metabolism adapts. Otherwise, on a 5/2 longer fasting periods & reducing carb intake should lower your glycogen & insulin levels which will enable your metabolism to start using your fat stores for energy.
Old fashioned/ large flake oatmeal is fine on fds (no big insulin spikes, good for gut bacteria) it’s the extras that add up.
Avocados are a good source of low carb fat. Lots of keto diet sites will give you ideas.

Hi Crazy and welcome:

Most people don’t know that if you eat too much protein (35% of diet or more on consistent basis) you will get sick. That leaves carbs and fat. We now know too many carbs (especially processed carbs) cause obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. That leaves fat. Fat seems to be OK for the human body.

The body only carries fat and protein for long term survival. In the listing of foods essential to human life, carbs do not make an appearance.

Here are some tips: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/

Good Luck!

Joey there are no restrictions with protein or any other macro nutrients on 5:2. You can structure meals the way you want them providing you stick to the calorie restriction on fast days and approximately your TDEE on other days.
Some people choose to restrict certain foods or macro nutrients for their own reasons. They are doing this in addition to the basic 5:2 program. You can follow food restrictions if you want to, but there is no requirement in the 5:2 program to do so. Of course on a fast day you have few calories to work with – this will limit the the amount of protein or any other macro-nutrient that you can consume.

I often choose prawns on fast days, either in a stir fry with loads of veg or in an Italian tomato sauce with spiralized veg ‘spaghetti’. Fairly lo-cal and totally yummy. If you like them!

Hi diver:

I would suggest your comment that it is ‘incorrect to say you will get sick from too much protein’ is a bit broad. I am not ‘anti protein’ by any means, as a person will die if they don’t get any from their food or their body. But I think research shows that there is such a thing as ‘too much’ protein, and I feel people should be made aware of that possibility.

Protein calories are not interchangeable with fat or carb calories. The breakdown of protein in the body generates toxins that the liver must remove. If too much protein is eaten, common side effects are nausea and diarrhea. Excessive protein intake also leads to a buildup of amino acids, insulin or ammonia in your blood stream. http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/three-problems-associated-much-protein-intake-6546.html

It is also well known that different proteins (plant based v. meat based) can yield different results. Most think of meat protein when they think of it at all, so many of the comments on protein reflect meat based results.

If a person is Type 2 diabetic, Dr. Fung points out that meat proteins will spike insulin levels (without increasing blood glucose levels at all). Not a good thing.

And many come to this site thinking about their IGF 1 levels. Protein restriction reduces IGF 1 levels. Research shows that “Respondents (n=6,381) aged 50–65 reporting high protein intake had a 75% increase in overall mortality and a 4-fold increase in cancer and diabetes mortality during an 18 year follow up period. These associations were either abolished or attenuated if the source of proteins was plant-based.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3988204/ “High protein intake” in this study was 20%or more calories coming from protein, with 11% or more of that amount coming from animal protein.

These findings in part explain why Dr. Longo’s Longevity Diet calls for low protein intake until age 65, and moderate protein intake thereafter, with most of the protein coming from plants and fish. At no time is a high protein diet indicated (even if within the ‘healthy’ levels set by the government, which are generally less than 35% of daily dietary calories coming from protein).

It is also almost dogma in the bodybuilding community that a bodybuilder needs to eat more protein to build muscle. This dogma seems to have migrated so that anyone undertaking an exercise program needs to eat more protein. This belief assumes that the person’s normal diet contains insufficient protein to build the wanted muscle mass. This, too, has been largely refuted.

It seems the ‘standard’ diet contains more than enough protein to handle all but athletes in training for the Olympics. Dr. Longo points out that eating more than .33 g. of protein per pound of body weight is unnecessary and simply suggests that if concerned, a bodybuilder just needs to eat a very low carb meal containing 30 g. of protein 2 hours after their weightlifting or whatever stops to optimize muscle building activity in the body.

In my opinion, which I’ve stated many times before, the average person is currently caught between a rock and a hard place. They have been told for decades that eating fat is dangerous. Now they are being told that eating carbs is dangerous (sugar and other processed carbs, which are a huge part of today’s average diet). That leaves protein, and it is not surprising that high protein diets are showing up everywhere (and being revived from days long past). One poster on this site a while ago was promoting a diet with over 70% of their calories coming from protein.

Certainly a discussion about how much protein is too much protein can be undertaken. I am not aware of any research that pegs that ‘too much’ amount, although the research noted above seems to indicate 20% of calories from protein might be too much. But research shows and has shown for a long time that protein can be dangerous to your health both in the short and long term. That is the point I have been trying to make for years.