Hi Imacs. You sound like a big guy with some big, ingrained habits. My experience is that changing your life after living a certain way is tough, trying to change everything in one go is even tougher. You may stick with it for bit, particularly if you have some health issues reminding you why you’re doing it, but there’s a significant risk that pretty soon you’ll give up.

My advice would be to change just one thing for now. So decide which 2 days a week you’re going to fast on and do it. Don’t worry too much about the non-fast days for now, just focus on doing the 2 days this week. Do this repeatedly for a few weeks so that it becomes a habit. You’ll start to see changes and feel better, which in turn will motivate you to change something else and so on.

You didn’t get to where you are in an instant, you shouldn’t expect to turn your life and health around instantly easier.

My 2 big lessons from this process (that I’m still learning) is that it’s about 2 things : consistency and patience. Make this a way of life and be patient, the change will come.

Hi Imacs, I agree with Rob, don’t change too many things at once. Take some time to work out some low cal. meals, unless you fast on water only on your fasting days. I am personally thinking it works better to eat one or two small meals on fasting days, because the body does not cut down the metabolism as much. Some people say they can not eat a small meal, that if they eat, they start to indulge. Anyway, if you could eat a 600 kcal supper on your fast days and leave the other days alone, you have a good chance to start seeing results and it would be easy to stick at it.
I do not agree that several small meals are good for all. Some people are happy with that, others are not. It can increase appetite when you eat in the morning, and you may not want that. Still, main thing is to get your fast days sorted and see the pounds melt away. Good luck

Hi Imacs,

First I wish you the best of luck. The first and hardest step is realizing you need to change.

I would caution you against doing two fast days in a row at first. Get the one day fast under your belt and then worry about a second day in a row. Generally after 24 hours of fasting the body starts making some profound shifts and the second day in a row is often the most difficult for people that are into fasting. Once your body gets more adjusted to fasting you will probably find the fasts easier. While fasting may not cut enough calories, I actually eat more on my 5 NFDs than I did per week when I wasn’t fasting, there is a lot more that goes on. You also should plan your fast days so you have easy access to bathrooms. You need to drink more and your body will start releasing more water while fasting.

I understand the all or nothing attitude. So if you do going and fast two days in a row and find it very difficult, just take pride in the knowledge that it just isn’t you. However the longer you fast the benefit there is in general, as long as you have enough body fat to sustain the fast. People that fast for many days often claim it gets easy after the 2nd or 3rd day. I just haven’t pushed that far myself yet.

When I started fasting I actually started by skipping supper here and there when I had opportunity. I knew about 5:2 but thought it sounded too hard. I just sort of slowly fell into it. I’m a big fan of making small changes but keep doing and finding out what works. Some things I’ve tried and I know they don’t matter to me, other “small” changes have had huge impacts.

For me here is what matters:
* Avoiding refined sugar – By far the biggest impact. This has greatly reduced my hunger and visceral fat.
* Lots of fruit and vegetables in my diet. It is strange the sugar in whole fruit doesn’t seem to have the negative impacts on me that refined sugar does.
* Exercising at high intensity. Short is okay, but I really need to push hard.
* Fasting really burns fat and helps build muscle
* I eat carbs but I don’t overeat them. I live in Japan which has a very carb heavy diet. I also try to eat complex carbs (like whole beans) as much as I can.
* Fats – I eat a *LOT* of nuts. Probably nearly 2 pounds of them a week. What can I say, I like them and my body doesn’t punish me for eating them.

I would expect your list would be totally different. For example I always avoid bread my whole life, so that is a big difference there! There were things I tried and abandoned because they didn’t really help or hurt me in the long run. Many of those things are helpful to other people.

Things that don’t work for me. (However they often work well for other people)
* Low salt diet, waste of time and money
* Calorie restriction is at best a temporary benefit for me by causes a great many negative impacts while I continue it for months.
* Portion control – waste of time. I now eat until I’m satisfied and then stop. (Fasting helped me tune into my body signals.)
* Calorie counting – waste of time. While it is good to have an idea of how much you eat, the amount of calories can cause me to make bad decisions. For example nuts have more calories than sweets but sweets make me fat and nuts don’t.
* Exercising extreme amounts like running until I burned over 1000 kc / day.

I guess the one thing to keep in mind is you probably won’t get everything right at first. Just keep experimenting and making progress. Don’t give up.

You already only ate one meal a day ?
I will give you a personal story here, may help.
I went on that 1 meal a day type for ~28 days. Sept 15 to Oct 12th 2016. It was just water through the day, no sweetened anything, sometimes black coffee, but nothing else. Then on oct 13 I forgot to eat dinner. Literally, forgot. I remember @ 11pm or so just as I was crawling into bed. Anyway, I got caught doing other stuff, the next day, got to eating ~6pm. 2 day fast. I said, that was pretty painless, let me do 3, same result, then 5 … then 8 (Fibonacci sequence). I would almost say, you have a great habit going, just forget to eat a day, then try that for 2 and then as you like to proceed – My longest fast was 20 days. Nov 24th dinner – thanksgiving to Dec 14 – office Christmas lunch.
Thanks.
Srinath.

The ting about fasting is – the less you eat, the more you’re able to stay away.
I am eating every day and will be for a few days atleast. My wife has started to say is making me foggy and sorta like I’m losing it. I now feel like cooking up my next meal, even though its not due for another 20 hrs.
The temptation to buy, stock, store, refrigerate, cook, clean and keep that next meal is almost my first thought. On a multi day fast, after 2 days or so, it fades away to nothing. You can even plan and decide what restaurant and what you’re gonna eat/make and not be bothered by it.
In fact I started it as a 13 dayer, then went to 15, then to 19 and 3/4. I was basing it on my social calendar, so I ate @ office Christmas party.

Even now, I cant tell you how nicely comfortable I was doing it. Its not as hard as 20 X 1 day, its less than 5 X as hard as a 1 day. I cant wait for my wife to conclude “I’m just as foggy as always” and I’ll be back to fasting my last 20 lb out.

Thanks.
Srinath.