Hi Alx,

Just come across your post and would love to join in the chat.

Female, 54 from Wellington New Zealand. Started 5:2 in Dec 2017, lost 16kg by June 2018, then gained 8kg by Jan 2019. Started 5:2 again and lost 4kg so far, with 4kg to go.

I stopped 5:2 in 2018 due to frustration of weigh loss plateau, also weather was getting colder. Have learned a lot since then on how to better manage non fast days (fast days were never a problem). Recently doing a very relaxed 5:2 and of course my weight loss plateau again.

Fast day today (usually Mon & Thurs). Aim to eat one apple around 1-2pm, then small dinner.

Will check in again soon.

Hi Alx, well done on your fast day.

I too, find slow days are more of a challenge. When I was more strict, I only ate dinner during fast days and no breakfast on slow days during the working week. Then eat normally at weekends. But weekends usually caused the problem,

Exercise wise, I didn’t find it affect my weight. I stick to the calories limit regardless of how much exercise I do. I also choose my goal weight calories as my slow day target, which is only 1500.

As a dieter for a few decades, I believe the most effective way to control weight is through food intake. Exercise makes me feel happy and tone my body but I don’t link it with weight loss. When I linked the two, I tend to overeat as I will miscalculate the calories I burned.

Hope your back is getting better. May be doing gentle exercise so your back will have time to recover?

New Zealand is a beautiful place. I came to study here back in 1986, and ended up living here permanently. We are like a small community and we care about each other.

If you like hiking, you will love New Zealand. If you are planning for a trip, make it a longish one as there are so many wonderful places you can explore.

My fast day went well yesterday: one apple at 2pm, one slice of cheese at 4pm then grilled meat and vege for dinner.

Skipped breakfast this morning but will eat out at lunch and dinner. Need to remember my 1500c limit.

Have a lovely day!

Formal weigh in yesterday at 70.2kg, a reduction of 600g from last Monday. But I was between 68.5 – 69.5 kg in last few weeks, so really need to be stricter.

This morning another drop of 700g, after a relaxed fast day yesterday – I needed to concentrate on some intensive number analysis and ate about one bowl of vege crisps. So calories intake was more like 800c.

Slow day today. Plan to eat a pear for morning tea, then vege soup for lunch. And meat and vege for dinner.

Hope your long weekend has gone well!

Well done on fasting during the holiday. This is something I have not tried.

My slow day didn’t go well yesterday, due to needing to stick to my desk for hours & I ended up ate bad food like crisp. The yummy carrot cake muffin my daughter baked last night did not help.

To me, -2 pounds (about 1kg) a week is a lot of weight to loose. Looking at my record (I used the tracker religiously to record weight on Mondays), I managed – one pound on average per week before fallen off the wagon.

You have done extremely well on losing 5 pounds in 8 days. Don’t be too disappointed if the weight loss in the following week is less. If I loose more weight in week one, then week two lost is usually less. Then week 3 is more and week 4 less and so on.

Need to stay strong today (slow day), and prepare for a good fast day tomorrow.

All the best to your day!

Thanks for your encouragement. I tend to go through a cycle that started with high level of determination, then declined after about 3-4 months. And now is on the decline.

Quite bad slow day yesterday. Again stuck on the desk for too long and ended up eating crackers and crisps in the morning. Even though the lunch and dinner portions were fine, the carrot cake muffins have offset it.

Surprisingly despite 2 bad slow days my weight has maintained since Tuesday morning.

Fast day today so will eat an apple at around 1pm, then a small dinner.

You have done so well and hope your fast day goes well too.

Thank you Alx! Your support is much appreciated. There have been months I was doing 5:2 on my own and it was difficult at times with no one to share information.

Interestingly I found non fast days more challenging than fast days – in general.

Most of the time my fast days were ok. One trick is limit the carb & calories the day before. Otherwise I feel more hungry the next morning. Regular non calories hot drinks (black tea/coffee, green/jasmine tea or even just hot water) throughout the day help. Engage in a different activity when you feel like eating: walk to talk to a colleague, make a phone call etc. My urge to eat never last long.

For non fast days, especially in the weekends, limiting calories is a real challenge. To combat this I tried to either skip breakfast or just eat an apple in the morning on non fast days, then controlled portion of lunch and dinner. I tried to eat slowly, so I feel full quicker, try to only eat half portion if I eat out. Unfortunately for me I can’t eat “whatever I want” in non fast days. This is a quite a common challenge.

My fast day went ok yesterday and all the best to your fast day.

Long weekend coming up and we are going to Whanganui. The weather is not looking good. Hope we will do a lot of physical activities and not too much eating.

Congratulations! You did it – 600c on fast day.

We should take one day at a time in this 5:2 journey. I find my resolve is weaning at the moment, and need quite a bit of effort to stay on track.

Reached Whanganui last night and woke up with a wintery blast. We managed to visit the river side market & got some groceries. Then will stay indoor for the rest of the day.

Booked on a jet boat & hiking tour tomorrow but it’s cancelled due to bad weather. Hope we can walk on the beach etc tomorrow.

Eating wise, probably consumed too much calories yesterday with a work farewell morning tea, normal lunch and dinner out. Today is no better, had breakfast (coffee and muffin) then lunch out in a very nice cafe.

As I’m on holiday so I won’t worry too much about calories. Will try to eat less calories tonight and tomorrow.

All the best for the weekend.

hi all

my first fast day went well yesterday and today I’m trying to stay under 2100 cals
last time I did the 5:2 there was a lot of hype that you could eat as much as you want on non-fast days and I was bingeing a lot and that was a mistake so I’m being stricter this time
not fanatically but just keeping the over eating in check
so far so good – next step is aerobic walking with my heart monitor
haven’t done any exercise for YEARS

have a nice fasting day tomorrow pheonixW thanks for your encouragement
I think the “eat what you want” myth was a gimmick to put the 5:2 on the map
I don’t think they push that claim now a few years on
lots of people had problems with bingeing on non-fast days because of it

It’s a good idea to watch your calorie intake on NFDs but for me I don’t want to get too extreme and then find I’m constantly hungry and constantly MISERABLE!
I’m looking forward to losing weight this time but I’ll only do that if I push myself but it’s a balance between being strict and not becoming miserable from constantly feeling deprived when you over do it
To be honest it’s a balance I somehow lost in my mid 30s having always been slim and I’ve never been able to get it back again

I just want to be able to eat food and to view food like a normal person

Fasting went well yesterday. It was cold in Wellington and my eating urge increases when it’s cold. Managed to hold on till 1pm & ate one pear. Then a light dinner.

Alx, you are correct about the need to rid of temptation. We don’t have cheese, sweet biscuits (cookies) or chocolates at home. However I bake regularly at the moment, because younger daughter’s diet resulted in a lot of unused egg yolks. And I can’t stand throwing them out. So I tried to bake muffin that has less sugar (& lots of egg yolks) etc. Most muffins are consumed by daughter’s boyfriend thankfully.

Like you, I’m in resetting mode. My weight has gone up and down in past 8 weights and I weigh the same as in early April. So hang on there and we will crack it.

In general I found non fast days harder to manage. My learning on what to do on non fast days:
1) Bulk the food up with a lot of vegetables & try to reduce (not eliminate) processed carb over time. My favorite non fast day lunch is usually a big bowl of rice, vegetable & egg soup, flavored with all sort of Asian sauces.
2) Eat a piece of fruit before the main meal
3) Eat slowly
4) Slowly reduce the portion. When eating out I try to put half portion into a container from the start. Of course you can’t do this for some meals.
5) Eat fruit when feeling hungry
6) Allow food that I enjoy, as long as I include the calories into my daily limit.

Of course I struggle to stick to them all the time. But I do need to eat more fruits, and less cup cake.

What is helpful too is my husband cooks most of the time. He basically put frozen steak under grill and boil vege to death. So it’s not hard just to eat the minimum. If I cooked then all of us will eat more. So I try not to cook.

Non fast day today, and I wish you all a happy day.

Well done Graham for such good discipline!

What about eating vegetables if you don’t like fruit? In fact some doctors advise severely limiting certain fruit because of their very high sugar content.

I was stuck in front of computer most weekend battling with accounts and tax returns – it will continue for next few weeks. As a result I snacked a lot more than usual. Fortunately the weekly weight loss is 200g, not a gain.

My husband has committed to skipping breakfast everyday. He has diabetes and was advised by a colleague to try this. It has been difficult to get him to fast – so this is a small progress. It means I also will commit to skipping breakfast everyday – including weekends.

We also watched Rocketman at the weekend. It was fantastic. Agreed the actor is superb and will be great to see him and film gets some awards.

Alx, hope your weekend eating gone well.

Fasting today. Have a lovely Monday to you all!

hi guys
fasting day today and it cant come a moment too soon
my whole mood crashed this weekend and all the interest in the whole losing weight dilemma evaporated into thin air and I was back to thinking “not sure if I am interested in doing this…..”

I have to say although I did have THREE tortilla wraps one after another STANDING UP in the kitchen (not even bothering to sit down!)
I think that was Friday night at about 10:30pm that was really the worst of it

I was out having coffee yesterday in the West End which usually means cakes – but I didn’t indulge at all I had a tuna sandwich and that was it

I’m now back fasting and trying to get my head together and I must say I do feel a lot more – if not exactly POSITIVE – a lot less NEGATIVE!

I think it’s just the first of many periods where I just have to weather my own self sabotaging and negativity
Also it’s the first week and I haven’t lost any weight or made any progress so the whole process feel very abstract and hypothetical

As soon as I lose a bit it will encourage me and help me start to feel more committed – at the moment that just feels like it’s impossible

the whole cliché “It’s a marathon not a sprint” is really true

for me weight is all about emotions and moods and psychological things – things I have never really understood within myself – I’m not 16 stone for no reason

I need to lose 70 pounds so I have a long journey ahead of me and it’s time to get used to the fact
the days of throwing my toys out of the pram and stuffing my face are over 🙁

Thanks for this thread I think it was quite a big factor in keeping me from completely losing it – you are out there doing exactly the same things yourselves – so why shouldn’t I??

Keep The Faith! xx

A good fasting day yesterday. Took a long walk at lunch time. Ate an apple at around 2pm, then normal dinner. Non fast day today.

Alx, loosing 5 pounds in 3 weeks is an excellent & sustainable achievement. It’s common for plateau to occur every 3-4 weeks. Like you I need to continue to work harder on non fast days.

Graham, we all had our bad moments. Last weekend I did’t need the iced coffee (with heaps of ice cream) & large amount of snacks. However if I want 5:2 to be sustainable I need to be able to enjoy some food that I really like. My strategy is allow some ‘bad’ food and set weight target reasonably low (loosing 400 g or 1 pound per week).

This forum has a lot of posts that are really helpful to stay motivated. I’m especially touched by the post from Merryme: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/january-2019-update-from-michael/

Let’s be inspired by Merryme and continue on this journey.

Have a great Tuesday.

hi Guys
Pheonix you’re right you are making yourself miserable if you get obsessed with having nice things to eat! It’s just not sustainable in the long run

I’m just starting to remember this stuff because it’s 6 uears since I lost any real amount of weight

the great thing is the things you learn come back to you
I’m a complete cry baby – which I’d forgotten – so it was a good reminder this week that NO-ONE SAID IT WAS GOING TO BE EASY

I had a great moment yesterday putting on my trousers – EASILY less of a battle to get them fastened!!!

couldn’t believe it

weighing yourself is great but it’s not the only sign that you’re going in the right direction and THINGS ARE HAPPENING
Al when people say “have you lost weight?” that’s a sure sign you’re doing something right Fantastic

you guys are really helping me – I think about what you’ve written during the day and it makes me feel so much less alone
let’s try to keep this going!
XX

Non fast day yesterday and again today
I’m really impressed with your eating regime on NFDs Pheonix – it’s definitely my Achilles heel one thing I need to learn is reining it in on non fast days
I agree with you Alx the fasting is so straightforward! also no chance of sabotaging it without realising – I’m very good at going into complete denial about what I’m putting in my mouth

Do you guys have a calorie goal to stay under for your non fast days?
I’m reluctant to do that because psychologically one of the things that makes 5:2 sustainable is having that break
But I think I’m having a bit TOO much of a break!

It’s all a learning curve – I’ve realised over these last few days of starting this I have had YEARS of never asking myself ANY questions about food WHATSOEVER I have just been eating whenever and whatever I liked

But that’s also part of the journey ahead, finding out the habits and changing them – seeing why I’m craving and trying to divert myself, SO MUCH WORK

but a lot of my stuff is habits and habits are the easy part because it takes no will power to change them you just stop doing it!
Apparently I read somewhere it takes 2 to 3 months to change and reset a habit – which is not that long at all especially when the end result will be so life changing

I’m looking forward to exercise being a habit and also the 5:2 itself just being a normal part of the week

Pheonix it’s a great idea to have clothes to have as a goal

It’s been so miserable for me these last months because a lot of my shirts no longer fit and even just a 7 pound loss would mean I could start wearing them again – I’ve been rotating the few clothes that I can get into – awful
And as for trousers! I’s double my wardrobe! I have about 6 pairs I haven’t worn for years!

P.S. Can you guys get back to me about whether you count calories on non fast days? I can see I need to nip it in the bud or it’s going to stop me losing weight and then I’ll jack the whole thing in altogether!

I sort of count calories on non-fast days – but I’m an accountant so can’t help myself.

My goal/limit for non fast day (1500c) is based on sedate lifestyle and my goal weight. After investing a little time to understand calories calculation, I can easily estimate calories e.g. a muffin is 300c, an egg 80c etc. But I’m not always successful to stay within 1500c, especially during weekends. I need to keep on working on different strategies so I can have food that I enjoy and stay within the limit.

I also weigh myself in the morning and evening. This helps me if I go too overboard with food, so I can rein in. I record every Monday morning weight in the tracker (under Resources of this website).

We need to work out ways that suit us. This forum has a lot of useful information. For e.g. fastingme has offer brilliant ideas and advice.

Non fast day went well yesterday. I actually have lost 300g overnight. Fasting today and is going to be a good day.

Have a happy Thursday!

Hi guys
Alx you’re right I find it a struggle but I’m hoping it gets easier as I learn the ropes – sorry if I moan a lot!
One thing that stresses me is not really knowing what I’m doing or what to expect etc. but I know I will relax as I develop a rountine
so far it has actually been must easier than I expected having put this weight battle off for six years, starting out was a huge barrier to get over – I finally just ran out of excuses!

weighed myself yesterday – dead on 16 stone as usual – I haven’t lost an ounce!
I think my body is on shock and just in disbelief that I’m actually controlling my food!

anyway I’m not fixating on weighing myself because it’s not really an accurate way to measure progress but it was pretty annoying
Fast day today and feeling ok so far

actually did an aerobic walk in the pouring rain yesterday and got soaked! felt great to be moving though I AM SO UNFIT!!

well done Pheonix it sounds like you are ticking over pretty so far
I am looking forward to the 5:2 becoming a lifestyle and part of my weekly rountine
I am not going to let rain or weighing scales discourage me
there are plenty of people on YouTube declaring “I lost 70 pounds!”
why shouldn’t I be one of those people?
I mean over the next year or two – how ever long it takes
I don’t want to be fat any more
In fact Pheonix as you tell yourself “I’m resting my body” when I catch myself looking at sweets and biscuits when out shopping my mantra is “I don’t want to be fat any more”
works for me – I remember all the misery my weight has brought me – and it helps me stop buying the wrong stuff

I did have the book but I gve it to a friend
this was a fast day for me and it went ok
I also did another aerobic walk in the rain! It was fine!

hi guys
hope you are coping being out of your routine Alx – if we mean to keep 5:2 as a lifestyle I suppose we have to learn to continue no matter what
The reason I stopped last time was because every week was another event where fasting would have been very challenging, inappropriate, inconvenient etc. – but these are all excuses I latch onto any chance I get so this time I want to learn how to have more resolve

Pheonix thanks for your encouragement – I really need it! How can it not be working?? Not one ounce lost!
Jeez – so discouraging
Having said that it would be crazy to stop now – but it’s an example of what can make you give up
Actually the mirror is telling a differenty story my face is definitely thinner so something must be happening
Of course as soon as I lose that first good amount of weight it will be so inspiring and I will start to get some momentum going – so far the whole project is just hypothetical and abstract Hey Ho!

NFD today and I ate sensible amounts because I wasn’t hungry – could be I’m starting to change habits

I have a friend staying next week so Monday I will be fasting and doing tourist stuff around London all day – determined to keep up with the 600 calories
My friend will be supportive he’s a nurse and has told me for years I need to lose weight!