Hi. I’ve lost 24lbs since New Year and am now starting to think bout maintenance.
On my first couple of fasts I did find I got a bit shaky and hot/cold. I don’t know if it was blood sugar or dehydration, but a few almonds sorted it out. And after the first week or so it didn’t happen anyway. I guess your body adjusts quite quickly.
I would second Franfit’s advice. I don’t do 24 hour fasts, but eat almonds, or natural yoghurt (with dates), or cottage cheese at maybe 11-11.30 and that keeps me going until tea time. I know it means less calories for the evening meal, but its surprising how filling 300 calories or so can be if you pick the right food. I tend to avoid processed carbs as for me they are a short term filler only, and give me that blood sugar low shaky hunger later in the day.
I know its been said here already, but this is so flexible and forgiving (if you fail to fast, you haven’t failed, you just do it another day instead! And even if you go a bit over 500 calories, its not the end of the world as its still less calories than a normal day). It might take a few attempts to find what works for you, but the overwhelming evidence is that it does work!
So good luck, and just keep thinking of confident you on that beach!

In answer to Gianna, It’s not THAT kind of diet hon. There are no specific foods to eat or not eat. The rules are ver simple: Go to the ‘How’ tab above and work out your BMR & TDEE numbers. On 2 days per week (entire waking day) you eat only 500 calories. On the other 5 days you can eat anywhere between your BMR and your TDEE levels of calories. You don’t need to be ABSOLUTELY EXACT with your calorie counts but you want to be comfortably between those 2 numbers if you want to shift weight.

That’s it. You can eat whatever you like, just make sure you’ve appropriately accounted for it in your daily calories. Personally I do not recommend your entire TDEE’s worth on a non-fastday in cake – I’ve done it and it tasted lovely but I felt a bit sick and it wasn’t all that satisfying long-term 😉 If you click on my name and read my recent posts I’ve discussed some food options on other threads recently and it might give you some ideas or point you towards the right threads.

champpoppy, good luck with your first fastday, I hope it’s going well for you so far. If you’re not much of a breakfast person anyway hopefully you wont even feel any difference in your day at all until at least lunchtime. It will be hard the first few times you fast to deal with other people eating around you etc. and you may have one or two ‘bad days’ in your first few weeks as you settle in and your body struggles to get used to it. Just stick with it, give yourself permission to bend the rules and have a few extra calories if you are really struggling and need them during the day at the beginning. Hang in there, most of the time all you really need is a swig of water and a firm “You can have XYZ tomorrow!!” to help you get through the bad moments.

Yay! champpoppy, good for you. It’s weird but after a while on 5:2 smelling other people’s deliscious food on a fastday is actually kind of nice. It makes you feel superhuman that you can just take a big deep breath of it and just shrug it off thinking to yourself “that smells nice but the XYZ I’m having tomorrow will be even better!”.

Keep up the good work – you’re over halfway there 😀