Only (long shot!) thing I can think of, Carol, is that I often find it easier to gain weight in warm weather, when I’m not using calories to keep warm. Make any sense?
This topic contains 11,627 replies, has 174 voices, and was last updated by hermajtomomi 7 months, 3 weeks ago.
Hi Carol,
Sorry to hear about your pain/ weight issues. I know antibiotics can cause weight gain, but you’ve only been on them for a week so that can’t explain your last 3 week’s weigh ins. I’m guessing it must be something to do with your illness. Is it just water retention or fat gain? If you’ve not been weighing regularly you won’t have been monitoring body fat though!
I think you just need to have faith! Ride this out. Keep eating and fasting as you have been doing, and hopefully when the intestines settle down things will return to normal!
I’ve been at top end and over my upper weight more times than not lately, yet earlier in the year I was worried because losing weight was too easy! The body’s too complex for me to understand!
Fast and Iz, I thought you’d get on but you’ve made me feel like such a bumpkin 🙂
Hi Hermaj and Fast, What lovely posts. I wish Lichtle would come back. I’m sure she is a native German speaker and would enjoy taking part in the conversation. ??
Carol, I had no problems in losing the weight and in maintaining for 12 months. Since then the weight has crept up 2-3 kg and I have fasted the weight off with great regularity. I think there maybe all sorts of reasons. Some of them in no serious order. You could all add to the list I’m sure.
Lack of motivation after reaching goal weight and successfully maintaining.
Boredom with fasting and paying attention to what we eat all the time.
Eating too much fructose and starchy foodstuff. One sugar treat a day is too much for my system.
Permission to nibble healthy food, that leads to too much food eaten in total.
Not drinking enough water on non fast days.
Change in exercise levels.
Difference in medications (for some people).
Feel free to add your own. Fasting today and later this week, as I have reached the upper limit for my comfort zone, some 3 kg above my desired weight. This gives me the motivation to fast properly. In my case the Tracker on this page suggests I should fast under 400 calories. And my total on no fast day is around 1600 calories. I have been indulging too much.
Cheers all, Bay ???????☕️☕️
You ain’t no bumpkin, Happy, mate! You’re a scientist with a doctorate, an environmentalist, a manager of multiple moggies, you can drive a car (which I can’t), you can walk down a hill without ending up on your bum (I can’t do that either), you are also a very funny, naughty lady,one of whose sayings I will always treasure: “Every family has a tosser in its midst.” If Jane Austen were writing now, I bet she would use it as an opening line.
Three things I’m good at: translating foreign languages so that they read or sound as though they were written in English; cooking; pissing off big-time a certain type of person (none of whom seem to venture onto this thread, I’m pleased to say) by merely existing. Apart from that I’m a fully-paid up, card-carrying, urban bumpkin.
Hi bay,
I’ve only just spotted your post. Thank you for saying such nice things about the exchange of poss between Fast and me.
Your advice is so worth listening to, although I confess I’m not quite as disciplined as you. Clearly, though, it has worked for you. After all, you have succeeded in losing all the surplus. When we met I found it hard to believe you had ever had a weight problem.
I agree, hot weather does make it easy to fast and to be fairly abstemious on non-fast days. However, as I once found, heat can also cause fluid retention – very annoying.
Hi Hermaj, you’re right of course! But I think when you enjoy learning and knowing stuff you tend to focus on what you don’t, rather than do, know!
Hi Bay,
I’ve been trying to work out what’s different for me cf this time last year, and I think exercise is a big part of it. It not only lifts my mood, maintains muscle/ metabolism, but seems to help regulate hunger.
What would really help I’m sure would be a bit of sunshine and a few days in a row when it didn’t rain!
Anyway, after two good fasts last week, and some moderate non-fast days, I was 800g under my top weight on Saturday. Hoorah. Think I may have undone my good work socialising at the weekend though 🙁 Back on it tomorrow…can’t afford to let up before Christmas!
Hi Happy and Fast
Sending you buckets of sunshine. ???????????. It was 35 C today and just lovely in the shade as we also cooled in the gentle steady breeze.
Fasted today on black coffee, and now having some raw carrot, celery and radish. And a few raw almonds as my sweet treat. Another fast day looking good.
Hermaj, In a way you’re right. I wasn’t fat ever, but I was overweight because of too much sugar and too many starchy treats. I was quite fit and competitive prior to turning 50. After I turned 50 I indulged in the sweet stuff, did less exercise, and slowly my weight crept up. When I was 15 kg overweight, I then found 5:2 and promptly lost the 15 kg. In fact I lost 17 kg but have not been able to maintain the lower weight. Maybe after Christmas in the very hot weather, I may be able to get down there again.
You are most definitely a maintainer and I’m glad you’re here with us. ??
Cheers, all. Bay ??
That’s an amazing fast Bay – must be less than 200cals!
I have a raging UTI. Saw the doctor and have antibiotics. It’s a FD and I woke up hungry, deliberated wether I should fast or not when unwell but decided to do it.
Soup early afternoon. Then I had to take the tablets with food so had 2 small slices of ham.
Hungry at tea time so had a few stewed apricots with a little bit of kefir yoghurt. Don’t know what the tally is but shouldn’t be too bad and it was all I could manage today. ?
Poor Carol, you have my sympathies, too. I’ve only had PVI once or twice and it was some time ago, but as Fast says, horrible.
Happy, I’ve just noticed something else I’m rubbish at, and getting worse. Typing! I’ve just noticed on my post to bay I wrote of an “exchange of poss”, which should of course have been an exchange of posts. Thankfully we have spellcheckers. There was a time when I was Typex’s best customer.
Well yesterday’s fast must have been OK because dropped 1.3kg. Even that in itself is odd. Day after a FD I am now showing a much larger weight loss than I used to. Used to be a gradual decline over the week until the weekend.
Oh well, recording weights so I will have a better idea hopefully by the end of the week as to what’s changed.
Yes UTIs are the pits!
Hi Carol,
A drop of 1.3kg sounds like you must have been retaining water, but then you’re fighting an infection so perhaps to be expected.
Funny that your pattern of weight loss has changed. Mine has gone the other way! Until recently I always lost at least 0.5kg per fast which stayed off, now some fasts don’t even register at the time but I’m lighter by the end of the week. No idea…!
Anyway, I hope you’re beginning to feel a bit better? I know there’s never a good time to be ill, but now definitely isn’t a good time!
I’m fasting today. I’m determined not to go into Christmas heavy!
Hi all, its great to read all your posts. I have been in maintenance for a couple of months. Its going ok but Im a bit concerned about my calories. I have calculated them again and again ,and over the week I am consuming on average max 1300. Thats absolute maximum, allowing for mistakes and even exaggerating my calories consumed. So is that exceptionally low? My TDEE is 1650 according to this site and other sites . Have I damaged my metabolism with nearly 2 years of 4;3?? Every one else seems to able to maintain with 1 or 2 days fasting per week. I am post menopausal and 5 ft 4 and not very active, but even so, is this abnormal ? I am very careful about logging except for on saturdays when I have a large meal . What do you guys think?
Depends what weight you’re trying to maintain at, Kindle. I agree, a daily max of 1300 doesn’t sound a lot, but a tdee of 1600+’sounds quite generous for a dainty 5’4″. Are you perhaps trying to maintain below ideal weight? Might your understanding of ‘not very active’ be different from the calcilator’s (what happens to the recommended tdee if you tick ‘sedentary’?). I honestly don’t think you’ll have damaged your metabolism – one of the good things about 5:2 is that the contracts between fasts and feasts avoid that effect. – so it’s a detective job to find out what else is going on. Fret not, we’re good at that here, and we do it together!
Lots of experienced people on this thread, so you’ll no doubt get lots of helpful suggestions, very soon. Don’t despair!
Thanks fast for your lovely message. I think you are right actually. I am trying to maintain at 60 kgs. That gives me a BMI of 22.7. I put in sedentary instead of lightly active and it gave me 1422, which is only a little bit above my daily calories on average!! So maybe I freaked out over nothing. I just wanted to know was this ‘normal’ and now I guess it is. Thanks a bunch!!
Poor Carol.
My attitude is, always weigh daily, no matter what.
I too have 60 as my upper limit. I’ve been basically 57 all year, but now sitting in 58s. That’s ok, as I’m in my 2nd winter this year and need that kilo. ?
Travel scales and daily weighing are the ONLY reason we have controlled our weight with two long o/s trips this year.
Go back to basics..2 proper fasts a week and very careful, low carb eating for a few weeks. You’ll haul it back.
I totally agree re languages in Aus. We simply don’t get a chance to practice. Kids learn lots of Asian languages at school these days. I don’t think it helps to understand English like European languages do. (Very poorly formed sentence sorry ?) P
Hi Kindle my BMI 20 and TDEE 1412. I put sedentary as I only do one regular 20minute walk with the dog every day and then some incidental activity throughout the day. I find it quite easy to eat within my TDEE as long as I am only eating healthy food and keeping an eye on portion size.
Purple, have been wondering if I need to do a major re-set ie 2 FD’s. When I was away because I didn’t have scales I tried to save calories wherever I could just in case I was putting on weight. Seven weeks of that was long enough for it to become a habit. Since I’ve been back I’ve reduced my intake on non FD ie no snacks anymore which was fruit, maybe some nuts and quite often I’m below TDEE on non FD. So I’m really neither one thing nor the other now.
This will be a controversial topic I know but I went and saw a Chinese herbalist doctor yesterday. (She is a doctor). I am open to using traditional and non traditional medicines. She has told me the UTI and the pains I have been feeling due to inflammation in the bowel won’t go away with antibiotics. She has given me a course of minerals to take, gave me acupuncture as well. Of,interest to you guys will be the fact she has said no sugar or CHO (Bay?) for a few days until the gut settles down as those foods only feed the inflammation. Interestingly, I had a call from the ‘other’ doctor yesterday too and he said my urine sample showed it was multi resistant to antibiotics and he now needs to give me a script for another – this will be the third one!
So,eggs and sponach for brekkie this morning!
Hi Carol,
I was very much as you describe for perhaps my first year or so of maintenance, easily maintaining my weight without fasting by, I suspect, naturally coming in under TDEE several days of the week. I’m not sure whether I’m happy to be back fasting regularly…although I had been concerned previously I wasn’t getting any fasting health benefits!
So sorry to hear your infection may try and hang on. I certainly don’t think it can hurt to explore more holistic alternatives to antibiotics.
Oh, and I should admit to spectacularly ditching my fast day today. I was too cold, tired and grumpy. Tomorrow now!
Carolann – snap to the multi-resistant UTI. The third antibiotic was evil, but did the trick – at the second attempt, by which time it needed a double-length course, at double strength. Problem was, when the lab reports came back, nobody thought it was important to let me know, until I’d already had 2 lots of pills and went back in despair to say neither had worked. Then it was ‘oh yes, the lab report said…’ – but by that time the wretched thing was really well dug in, and took extreme measures to fix. Moral: don’t wait for ‘we’ll call you…’ – shout, jump up and down, find your own additional strategies…as you’re doing. Best of luck! (I’ve been taking cranberry tabs ever since, with no recurrence: no idea whether that correlation equals cause, but content to go on taking them, if they help at all to keep it at bay. )
And your Chhinese herbalist is def onto something with sugar and IBS: mine is much better since 5:2, but often plays up after weekly ‘cake day’. So, do I give up ‘cake ? Course not, cos basically I’m still stupid!
Interesting you are worse after cake day Fast but supports Chinese docs theory. She told me I would be like that too and it would be my choice wether I have the cake or not. I don’t know – it would be a pretty dull life without a piece of cake now and then wouldn’t it lol.
Happy, thought you had reported a similar situation re maintenance stalling. I am weighing every day, waiting to see how I feel after a few days sugar and carb free and then re-assess.
Hi Carol,
I only have added sugar and bread on Saturday and Sunday at most, and eat pasta and rice perhaps once a week. That hasn’t changed. So it’s not that I’m eating more carbs at the moment.
The only difference I can see is vastly reduced activity level over the last month (it’s barely stopped raining in Cumbria, and some of the local roads are impassable on foot most days). And lack of daylight/ sunshine doesn’t help mental well-being either:(
Having been low 59s on Saturday, I’m now back at 60. This time last year I was in the 58s, and hit a low of 57.5!
Re: life being dull without cake. I’m afraid I don’t agree! Now life without cheese/olives/nuts/thai curry etc would be dull, but life without cake would be…well…just life without a little package of toxic empty calories which spike insulin and feed inflammation! It’s an addiction, not a treat 🙂
Apologies for disappearing. No, I’m not sulking, I haven’t been modded, but sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel really is a train coming the other way.
The current project has brought more stuff my way but I’ve told a couple of white lies so that I can be free in time for the weekend – I’ve said I’ll be away when we’ll actually be here, cooking like mad alongside my favourite family members – my beautiful great-nephews and their lovely mum who despite a 30-year age gap is one of my closest and most trusted friends. There are other colleagues picking up the slack and I will certainly have done my share.
There are times when I wish was either stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s or one of those little old dears toddling down to the day centre for a nice game of bingo and a singalong with Vera Lynn. However, I’m pretty sure that within minutes I would probably want to find a nice cosy corner and quietly slit my wrists.
Happy, it sounds as if we share the same weaknesses. Like you, I can live without cake. The only difference between us is that I’m not overly fond of nuts, although the occasional roasted cashew or smoked almond doesn’t come amiss… Back to the tunnel. 🙂
Hi all
To support what we’re all doing. There’s been a lot of publicity here about fatty liver disease, not caused by alcohol, but by too much sugar. Look it up. ???
All supports Happy in her description of little parcel of poison. Very few of us add sugar to our foods, so it’s the stuff that’s been added prior to cooking that is the real problem.
Cheers, Bay ??☕️☕️??☀️☀️☀️☀️
Hi Happy – will be thinking of you tomorrow – enjoy your lunch! We seem to be socialising roughly alternate days – tomorrow it’s breakfast. So we are sort of doing ADF – never done it before, but it feels ok. Not losing after FDs at the moment – but at least this way we’re not gaining either, so hoping we can at least stick to that. It’s so precious to be catching up properly with friends and family – and sharing food together is such a natural and universal way of renewing and reinforcing relationships – sacramental, if you will – BUT I’m determined not to start 2016 with the results sitting on my belly, so practising austerity on the other days is the only way to have my toxic parcels, eat them, and get rid of them before they get to feel too much at home!
Well if there were gingerbread cemeteries I’d probably be in there eating the gingerbread! ?
Makes sense Bay fatty liver and sugar. I have a friend diagnosed with fatty liver and she barely drinks. I will tell her about the sugar. Wasn’t sure if you had included a link Bay!
And what does ADF mean?
Maintaining at Xmas time is better than putting it on Fast well done! And it is a special time of the year and it is good to catch up with friends and share food and wine. And this is why we do 5:2 so we can enjoy these minor hiccups. ?
ADF…alternate day fasting, Carol. A bit like whipping yourself with birch, methinks.😯
I’ve just loaded an article on Jojo’s thread re maintaining over Christmas, if you want a look. Good sensible advice.
Re weather. I find summer much easier to maintain, even though it usually includes Christmas for me. I really need that extra fuel to keep warm in winter. Yesterday, after very little food all day, I was shivering just before I ate. One or two mouthfuls and I began to heat up. P
Hi from beautiful Andalucia everyone. Have been following your posts with interest, some have really made me smile; not enough time to contribute properly as we’re having a very active trip but wanted to say happy holidays to you all. I have managed 3 fasts in as many weeks and my travel scales say that I am 59.0kgs which is a kg less than when I left home so I’m very happy. Lots of hilly walking in the Sierra Nevada region. No-one here speaks any English whatsoever so my Spanish is getting a good workout too which is exactly what I’d hoped for.
Great to hear you are having a good trip Thin.
We did several galleries and the British Museum and Nat Gallery today. Finished off with Southbank. Not a patch on Edinburgh’s Christmas markets. Both dog tired after miles of walking…can’t cope with the Tube! After commuting “home”, an easy home cooked meal is so good.
Can’t believe it’s a week until Christmas. I feel it was a month ago!!! P
Hi thin,
It’s good to see you are not only a Portugal enthusiast – I think the posh word is Lusophile – but also a Spanish speaker. 🙂
I’ve been in Andalucia at Christmas and weatherwise you get a bit of everything, blue skies and warm sunshine, freezing cold, especially when you are up in the mountains, and occasionally floods with rain and gales that make the rain fall horizontally.
Spain is a great place for losing weight – or at least not putting any on. After all, it’s the authentic Mediterranean diet. Both times I worked out there for a year or more, once on the east coast, once in the north west, I came back to the UK at almost my ideal weight. Same thing happened after working in the South of France. The weird thing was that every time, within a couple of weeks of my return to the UK I had regained at least 3 or 4 kilos and eventually ended up as fat as when I left. Maybe I should emigrate. Or maybe I know enough about how to avoid it happening again.
Have a wonderful Christmas. We’re off to chilly Holland.
Glad you are enjoying London, Purple. I tend to agree, we don’t do Christmas markets as well as other UK cities. Did you get to see the Goya portraits at the National Gallery? I’d always associated him with The Disasters of War, the Black Paintings and The Third of May, but hadn’t realised he was also a great portrait painter. You might enjoy this little video, especially the comment about Fernando VII.
http://www.artfund.org/news/2015/10/08/video-jeremy-paxman-on-goya-the-portraits
Totally agree, Happy…the weather is quite mild now. My point was, without food I get ridiculously cold. Just an interesting faster’s perspective. Pre 5:2, I never experienced this. It is surprising how little “fuel” it takes to warm up again.
London, at present, is not much colder than a Sydney winter…just no sunshine and too short days!! P
Hi herma, not so much a Spanish speaker yet but I am very keen. I can make myself understood fairly well but then can’t understand a thing that is said in reply! I have found some old codgers in the village square who seem willing to indulge me.
So far very lucky with the wx, as you say it can be very chilly at night but the days have been glorious sunshine and warm with only a half day of drizzle in Seville. As for the food, the fish man comes and honks his horn three times a week, veg lady twice and the bread man daily. In this part of Spain, you still get a free tapa with every drink. I could get used to this!
You’re having a very busy holiday purple. Do you have any time at home before venturing to WA?
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