I wouldn’t fast deliberately if you paid me! I sometimes don’t bother eating because I’m not hungry, but this is only occasionally. Fasting under medical supervision for type 2 diabetes might be useful, but fasting just to lose weight doesn’t suit everyone. I felt ‘spaced-out’, irritable, physically fatigued, naggingly hungry despite feeling ‘full’, virtuous, ‘thinner’, and ‘happy’ and achievement-oriented (to be an intermittent faster).

Now, when I skip meals with some vaguely virtuous reference to ‘fasting intermittently to lose some weight’, I end up ratty, hungry, struggling to avoid cakes, pastries, chips, and so on (even sandwiches), and frequently determined to overturn the fasting trend by heartily enjoying goodies such as chocolate confectionery, buttery biscuits, slices of cake, filled white baguettes and paninis, cream (real, double) desserts, and cheesy fillings and toppings.

My advice is: don’t fast so much

I really do enjoy all those things mentioned above. If we can have real cream, real chocolate, real sugar, real bread, real butter, real cheese, we’d tend to feel alot happier and more satisfied – a win-win outcome.

Daisy wouldn’t fast deliberately unless you paid her, but here she is on an intermittent fasting site’s message board. So take that for what it’s worth.

What Daisy describes was similar to my fast experience, but only for the first two fast days. Then they got much easier. In fact, now I find my fast days fairly easy, sometimes even a bit euphoric. The best part is that my body seems to have adjusted itself for the better on the non-fast days. I do not crave sugary or fatty foods. I am satisfied faster and with fewer calories by the meals I eat. My meal choices have also skewed much more the healthy end.

I agree that enjoying real foods makes me happy and more satisfied, but being overweight cancels that out very quickly. Intermittent fasting is by no means a miracle solution, but it is definitely working for me.

Again, well said Al. You have to take with a pinch of salt people who comment negatively on multiple postings about fasting, on a fasting website. Daisy should find a different resource for her needs as it’s clearly not fasting that she needs.

I’ve been on 5:2 for 7 weeks now and I have noticed that initially it was difficult and I thought a lot about food on FDs but now that’s lessened. I’ve also moved away from eating meals throughout the day on FDs and now have a very small breakfast then nothing but water/decaff coffee until evening meal. It works for me quite well. I’m actually finding that I prefer FDs as I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat and try and control it – that was an unexpected discovery. FDs are more relaxed I find. I also appreciate the food I do eat on NFDs more, it’s heightened my awareness of how calorific some tiny things are!