Hi Ally,

You don’t seem to be aware of Total Daily Energy Expenditure(TDEE). 5:2 is, for females:

FAST DAYS – 2 non-consecutive Fast Days (FDs) per week – 500cals, or less than 500cals, or 1/4 of your Total Daily Energy Expenditure per FD. (For males 600)

NON FAST DAYS (NFDs) – 5 nonFDs per week – up to, but not more than, your TDEE. You have to calculate your TDEE. At the top of this page you’ll see a heading ‘Resources’. Click on that, then click on BMI on the drop down menu. On the right hand side of that page you’ll see a calculator for Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). Fill that out, including your physical activity level. On the left hand side you will see descriptions of what each physical activity level means.

When you have calculated your TDEE level that is the maximum calories per day for your NFDs. This is not a small or restrictive figure. It is actually how many calories your body needs for your sex, height, weight, activity level, on a daily basis. If you eat over this number of calories in a day you are over eating. Eating your TDEE is not restricting calories. It may be less than what you’re used to, but if so, you have been eating/drinking too many calories on a daily basis. This is not new to any of us because this is how we all put on excess weight in the first place.

Weight loss on 5:2 – On your FDs you eat restricted calories, so only 2 days have restricted calories. Averaging the 7 days out is not needed in 5:2. 5:2 works by the body alternating between normal calories and restricted calories. On the restricted calorie days (FDs) you will lose weight. On the other 5 your aim is to stay somewhat steady. Your weight will go up and down a little bits but it will be in a downward direction.

Health on 5:2 – this is 5:2,s original intention – to improve health. On the 2 restricted calorie days your body will go into repair mode for that fasting period.

Please read the thread -Info for Newbies by simcoeluv. It is an excellent overvue of 5:2.

Merry

Ally,

There is no magic involved. There is a caveat to you don’t need to think about calories. If you have a good sense of portion control you don’t need to think about calories! I don’t count calories on non fast days or fast days. The trouble is if you are over weight then your sense of portion control probably isn’t what it should be so you may need to count calories, at least initially. A lot of overweight people do not receive clear signals as to when they are satiated and continue to over eat.

The only way that you an lose inches but not weight is if you replace the fat you have lost with lean mass (muscle). Fat is less dense than lean mass so it will occupy more volume. Lose 10 pounds of fat and replace it with 10 pounds of lean mass and you will be slimmer.

See my answer above. Other than that I don’t know how you can lose inches but still weigh the same.

Ally, my non-medical, but long exercising and avid health/food researcher, opinion is:

1. You do not have to be a high end athlete to convert fat to muscle – but you do have to be doing “something” towards that goal, even walking regularly is excellent exercise for your health. Converting fat to muscle is actually a misnomer; one loses fat and builds muscle, and building new muscle fibers is a process that takes months.

2. Your body may be, from fasting, learning how to utilize energy differently, and burning fat, so it’s very reasonable you have some fat loss and your clothes are looser.

3. Your weight isn’t that high to start with; my understanding is that those with less to lose, do so more slowly. You said you had friends losing more, but younger; being post-menopausal is a medically valid condition which affects your rate of weight loss.

4. Losing weight slowly is the way to go! Being a lifestyle change, vs a diet (ie temporary) means you have a much, much higher chance of losing the weight and keeping it off, verses doing the diet, losing the weight fast, going off the diet, gaining it back. This yo-yo effect is actually worse for your health and metabolism than making small habit changes which result in weight loss over the long term.

5. You have seen a change in the scales. You said you have lost 1.5 kg, which is over 3 pounds (American here) – have you ever seen how much a pound, or 5 pounds, or a couple kg’s of fat looks like? Sometimes gyms have them. It’s quite a hunk of stuff! Take a pound of fat here or there, and couple that with your small frame, and it is very likely that the inches/cms you are seeing lost are directly correlated to your weight loss.

So I want to encourage you to embrace where you are, for everyone is different, and steel yourself for the long-term. At 55 years old, your body has been used to a certain mode of consuming and utilizing energy for a long time; it may, it will, take a bit to adjust to this. There are many health benefits to the 5:2 outside of weight loss, and you can encourage yourself that even if the weight isn’t coming off as fast as you like, you are helping yourself become less disposed to getting diabetes, Alzheimers, and certain kinds of cancer.