I can’t tell you how excited I am about this new way of eating! I’ve been living the low carb lifestyle for 4 years now and it’s been pretty great. I was able to loose around 30 lbs (sorry, I’m American) and maintain my weight pretty well. I started out at like 185 and got down to where I was fluctuating between 155-165. I always thought I’d get a little lighter and get a little smaller around the waist, but it never seemed to be happening. I even do old school Jane Fonda and Jazzercise workouts every day of the week and do kettle bell weight training 3 times a week and walk my dog everyday!

I had read a little about intermittent fasting before, but I saw something pretty early on in my research about it not working for women or causing fertility problems so I abandoned that idea. Then I went on a vacation and went “carb crazy” as I call it, and gained 10 lbs that would. not. budge. Even when I was being super strict about my carbs.

So I started researching again and thought since I don’t want to have kids anyways, who cares if it messes up my fertility, lol (and the research of fertility was with rats, so it might not apply to humans anyways). I found this site and I can’t even tell you how happy I am! In 5 weeks I’ve lost those stubborn 10 lbs and gotten even lower than I expected! That with having 2 carby treat meals a week to boot! This way of eating is so great, I can still have the things I was missing, but I don’t even want to over eat the way I did before. And after I’ve eaten dinner and my dessert, even if I get “hungry” for a snack, it’s so easy to be like, “meh, I’ve had enough food for today, I’ll eat again tomorrow.” I never thought I could ever get to this point! It feels like magic!

I do a 500 cal fast on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then do an “eating windowish” thing where I just skip breakfast on the feast days and eat a little more for lunch and dinner, staying at or around the TDEE. I have no fear that I can eat like this forever going forward. It works so well for me and keeps things so simple, and I do feel energized and efficient! Thank you for everyone who posted before! When I was starting out and nervous it really helped to read all the forums.

The stories are so inspirational. I am going to incorporate the 5:2 diet into my already successful 1700 calories per day diet. I do find that a couple of people here are going way too low on their calories on non-fast days. This is not healthy and will make it that much harder to maintain. The non-fast days are supposed to be the way you will remain your weight after reaching goal with perhaps one fasting day a week. Your body will be used to this calorie level day after day to keep the weight off. I just thought I would mention this. We all want to reach our goal weights, but it should be done in a healthy way.