This topic contains 11,627 replies, has 174 voices, and was last updated by hermajtomomi 7 months ago.
You’re right, Thin. 😉😉
I am so much happier on fast days, I suspect partly because of feeling in control and partly from being free from making a single decision about food. And I know that I will sleep well tonight. Woohoo!
My weight creeps up every week I don’t fast. I just feel healthier when I fast. Now off to do some weeding of the lawn while the ground is soft.
Cheers, Bay ☕️☕️🐾🐾⛳️⛳️😎😎
Thanks, Happy
I no longer take statins, and seem to be able to manage my cholesterol with diet. I believe that reducing sugar intake also helps. I’m writing this with stir fry chicken and vegetables wafting in the air. The end of my second fast day this week. Vegetable soup only this afternoon.
Cheers, Bay 🌺🌺
That’s great news on the cholesterol Bay.
It’s 8.30am here, and I’m now imagining the smell of stirfry. Not good at the start of a fast day! I am comfortably in my maintenance range so it may not take much to tempt me from abstinence… reminder to self ‘think of the health benefits’!
I’m really struggling with a low mood again. It’s raining AGAIN, and we’ve got ANOTHER warning for heavy rain today/ tomorrow, with sleet for Saturday, possibly sunshine and showers (in reality think heavy rain interspersed with light rain) next week. Think you SHs have stolen the sun!!
You and me both fasting today, Happy – let’s do it together. (Actually I’m semi-fasting – second one this week, and well within range, but I’ve noticed recently the return of a tendency for weight to creep up between fast days, so am hoping to curb it.) Have just had a few blueberries, a small clementine and three or four almonds, and the thought of a stir fry is tantalising. Downside of the talking to folk in SH first thing in the morning, I guess.
Sorry you’re feeling so low – I agree, the constant murk this winter has been really depressing, even for those who don’t suffer from SAD. Feb is always my most hated month of the year, despite signs of hope in the emergence of flowers – logically it should be Nov, but it seems to be the endurance-test which does it. Does fasting make it better, or worse, for you? Are there any small tricks/treats which you know work for you? If so, now sounds like the time to give yourself permission to indulge them! Any decent films showing up there? At least the sun is shining here (for the moment – we’ve been warned it won’t last) so get out and enjoy it before the wet stuff comes back – blow the indoor stuff: this is therapy! Time enough for all that once you’ve had your Vit D – and hopefully by then it will be dark, and indoors can be enjoyable – fire, bed socks, hot choc, good book etc… – but the charm does wear off a bit after so long, doesn’t it?
Would love to send you sunshine, but since it’s in such short supply will leave that to SH pals. Just know you’re not alone! X
Thanks for the mood boosting pep talk girls!
I am having a day off work tomorrow, going for a haircut (which will feel like a bit of a pamper) and perhaps a bit of retail therapy (window shopping at least!). Sadly by the time I get home I’m likely to be drenched and looking more ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ than ‘salon perfect’.
I’m hoping the fast will help my mood! I’m going to have to not start eating though, else my resolve will fail. And if it doesn’t help my mood today…Well at least I can treat myself to something in the very nice traditional coffee shop tomorrow 🙂
Happy, I hope your haircut will put you in a wonderful frame of mind. At least have a chuckle at my experience at a new hairdresser yesterday which is sure to leave you feeling much better. My BP must have been through the car roof on the drive home. What is it with the random surplus charges? If I purchase a Living Social style voucher (valued at $240, yeah right) for a wash, cut, colour and blow dry, that’s generally what I expect is going to happen. Don’t tell me I need to spend another $30 on toner (unless it comes with gin, ice & lime) and don’t suggest my ends are dry and need a $25 ‘treatment’. You’re going to cut them off in five minutes. What’s that now? It’s ‘just $30 extra today’ because my hair was thick? If you’re selling a voucher for a haircut, please don’t be surprised that you might actually have to cut my hair. No, I don’t want flippin’ fries with that.
Thin,
Thank you for sharing your haircut horror story. I’m hoping my experience tomorrow will be slightly more relaxing! I have no voucher, and I have years of practice avoiding buying the overpriced products they shamelessly promote!
Did you pay up rhough? And is it a good haircut?
P,
I’m led to believe it’s night time here, mainly because it’s marginally darker than it was earlier on…!
Same here Bay. Massive thunderstorm and now a blackout.
Hope Happy’s haircut went ok…she’ll be asleep now. She’s right though..”over there”, at this time of the year, it IS hard to differentiate night and day. 🌙🌚 Even with the storm, it was light here. Perth’s sun yesterday was absolutely scorching…I was rushing for shade. It’s one extreme, or the other, isn’t it?
P
Bay and P,
I hope you’ve had your utilities restored. I love a good storm, but there are downsides!
Still very windy here, but the forecast suggests we may get a brief respite from the rain during the day.
Trust Me I’m a Doctor this week discussed how you should weigh yourself. It covered the usual (same scales, same place, same time) but suggested weighing daily and then averaging it over the week (or weekly/ monthly).
I’d not thought of doing that, although I am aware that my weekly lowest is perhaps 0.5kg lower than most other days the same week!
The average would be a more accurate description of weight over the time period… I guess then you’d just use the rolling average to look for upward trends rather than any individual day’s weight.
Hi P,
No, the hair is not super short! I wish I could carry off elfin, but no… It’s a good 4cm or so shorter, back at collar bone length, and I think I may be growing the layers out. We’ll see. I’ve gone a bit shorter with the fringe. It’s all very well being on my eyebrows in the salon but give it two weeks it’s in my eyes and I’m trimming it myself 🙂
Retail therapy went well. I bought a nice new top…and then crushed and split a milk carton in the same bag…top’s in the wash! I could have spent a lot on the sale rail…no 12s – 16s, but plenty of 8s 🙂
And the sun did come out. So all in all I’m a bit less Eeyore today!
Hi Imogen,
5:2 is a form of intermittent fasting (IF), and I don’t consider IF a ‘diet’ (in the way that weight watchers, etc are). It’s just a way of life.
My husband is in his 50s and has never had a weight problem. He can overeat with the best of them, but naturally has occasional days when he eats nothing because he isn’t hungry. He never bought into the 3 square meals a day plus snacks. So IF (e.g. 5:2) is just naturally how some slim people manage their weight.
I haven’t ever done ‘diets’ as I knew they aren’t necessarily sustainable long-term. I maintained a healthy weight in my 20s/30s by 16:8 and exercise. I then got brainwashed into eating breakfast, and too much refined carb, and surprise surprise started gaining weight.
5:2 helped me lose weight, but more importantly changed my relationship with food and helped me understand that it’s up to me how I manage my calorie requirements. I can do a fast day, I can skip breakfast/ lunch, eating out/big meal? Eat less earlier in the day, etc.
It certainly works for me. Maintaining my new weight is pretty easy. And I wake up every day pleased to have a flat stomach 🙂
Glad to hear Eeyore’s on his way out, Happy. I love him, even if he is a miserable old git, maybe it’s BECAUSE he’s a miserable old git. These relentlessly cheerful types can be a pain in the backside.
On the subject of Winnie-the-Pooh and his pals, who I think are even funnier when you get to be an adult than they are when you’re a kid, here’s a naughty little cartoon dating back to the swine flu epidemic. As they say on the telly “contains strong language”, but so do the poems of Philip Larkin and the other Hermaj at Buck House invited him to be Poet Laureate. He refused.
http://www.styggforden.se/coppermine/displayimage.php?pid=10084
Sorry, couldn’t resist it.
Thank you, Bay. Badly hungover this morning from an ill-judged day-off sugar fest yesterday – I really do feel like s**t – never had an alcohol hangover but I’m reliably informed this is an accurate replication! – and the sunshine and thoughts are really welcome. Roll on Lent! (10 days to go, anyone who’s wondering…)
Imogen, welcome. You will see from this that we do all fall off the wagon occasionally, but with 5:2, increasingly our bodies become attuned to our real needs. If I’m honest, I didn’t even want all the rubbish I ate yesterday, even at the time – I hoovered it up because ‘if I don’t have it now, I won’t get another chance till next Friday’ (Friday is our ‘feast day’) – which is a very ‘diet’ way of thinking, not at all in the 5:2 spirit! So today is entirely of my own making and I deserve and expect no sympathy – listen to Bay and Happy, (and me on a better day!) – they are right – but also be reassured that with 5:2 you decide for yourself what waggon you’re on, and it’s always possible to clamber back on! No real harm done, but a lesson re-learned!
Hi Fast,I know exactly where you’re coming from. I lost a day and a half’s holiday in September, not because I’d indulged in any great face-stuffing, I’d just been stupid enough to include too many carbs, albeit in modest servings. But THREE modest servings in one day is bad news for me. The over-indulgence hangover is horrible – especially the throat full of acid that wakes you up in the small hours – but the upside is you probably won’t be doing the same thing any time soon.
Meanwhile I’m having one of those days. I’m in full-on Eeyore mode. The week’s fasting pattern (including observing 15:9 or 16:8 every day) has had sweet FA effect on my weirdly metabolising body. It makes me want to throw all my toys out of the pram and run down the street screaming obscenities and punching anyone who gets in my way. And probably getting arrested and sent down for suggesting that the arresting officer was the result of an illicit relationship.
Sure, it’s great not to have regained any of the 14 kilos it’s taken 3 years to lose (10lbs a year in old money), and now being able to look in the mirror without wanting to slit my wrists. But an itsy-bitsy pound or two less would be so morale-boosting.
If I were obliged to go to the quack for any reason (a very rare occurrence these days) my BMI is still high enough to get a futile lecture about not eating stuff I have never, ever eaten or haven’t touched in decades.
Thanks, hermaj, for the empathy, and I’m sorry you’re also in the rubbish club today – and you not for any sin that deserves it! (Actually sounds to me more like Tigger on bad acid, or Max being a Wild Thing, than poor old Eeyore whose style was more passive-aggressive, but there you go…) Would punching a cushion help, or does it need to be a person? Just don’t fall into the ‘might as well give up’ trap, will you? It will start to shift again – and 14kilos is 14 kilos of achievement, remember.
Happy, it actually wasn’t all that much, by previous standards: the lesson I’ve learned is that my system can’t do it any more – and there’s a lot less of me to metabolise it.
Fridays always involve coffee and cake, and it’s the one day of the week I make a pudding; we look forward to it, it’s proportionate, and not normally a problem. Yesterday was subtly different: it was a foul day, and since we had a cinema gift token still to spend, we decided to progress from coffee shop mid-morning to cinema after (non-existent) lunch. While I bought the tickets, DH was dispatched next door to that purveyor of healthy snacks, H and B, for ‘a small packet of plain nuts’ – and came back with chilli-chocolate cashews, artisan popcorn and trail mix. I soon established that the popcorn had been made by an artisan with a tooth much sweeter than mine, but the cashews – well….
Leaving the cinema, we bumped unexpectedly into DD, so more coffee (no cake for me, though DH managed an almond biscotti).
By the time I was driving home (30 miles down the M5, howling gale, pouring rain, Friday rush hour – don’t ask!) I knew I was in trouble: slightly wired, a bit snappish, not nice to be with. Arrived home knowing I needed to make an effort to be nice, rather than bovine, so added pasta (whole grain, but still pasta) to the mushroom stuff fry I’d prepared earlier. I then used up two microwaveable sponge puds – the sort of stuff we never eat, but they’d been given at Christmas and I wanted them gone – and – last straw! – because DH wanted custard on his, and I hate custard, ate my unwanted pudding with a topping of unwanted ice cream.
So now you know – and serves me right. Today I am living on hummus, avocado and a great deal of carrot, lettuce and watercress, with lots of clear fluids as well as strong coffee, ibuprofen and paracetamol. I have been for a ‘nice walk in the fresh, bracing air’ (!**!!*) and am just beginning to feel human again.
As hermaj so wisely says – shan’t do that again in a hurry. My only question is: if this is what an alcohol hangover feels like, why does anyone continue to go out on the lash? Answers on a postcard, please, in nice big print…
Because, dear Fast, just like overeating sugary carbs, once you start drinking too much alcohol, you lose your self control. We all need to learn where our limit is. I guess most of life’s pursuits are the same. Great life lesson, eh?
We have endued 3 massive thunderstorms in the last couple of days, with the power off more than on. I’m fed up with resetting all the clocks each time we have power again, just to lose it. Still, I love the excitement of a good storm!
Have eaten well, with some restraint, this weekend. Fast absolutely necessary tomorrow. Cheers P
That’s me told, then 😱😡. Extra fast tomorrow, to balance, then back to controlled, mindful eating with once-a-week, single-portion, sugary carbs, chosen with restraint by me. (And that’s not an attempt to blame anyone else – someone else may have bought the stuff, but no-one made me eat it at gunpoint. Mea sole culpa!)
Seriously, aren’t our bodies fantastic, when we listen to them? Despite the abuse yesterday, mine didn’t stop speaking to me even when it was suffering, but told me loud and clear what it needed today to put it right. I couldn’t have faced anything carb-y, but was longing for green stuff and freshness. As always, I’m in awe.
Sounds as if you could just give up resetting the clocks, P, and go into ‘get up and go to bed with the sun’ mode. Would you be free to do that? Or do you get midnight sun at this time of year?
Since the storms will continue with or without your permission, go with the flow and enjoy enjoying them in all their power and glory! And enjoy tomorrow’s fast, back in your own place. The holiday sounded wonderful; I hope being home is just as good.
Hi Fast
Must have been something in the air. My Friday was a bit indulgent beginning with coffee n cake. Then downhill all the way. Saturday I felt ill. I read Michael Mosleys book Blood Sugar Diet where the effects of processed carbs n sugar are spelled out. So back on the wagon again. Can’t wait for Lent. ☕️☕️🌺🌺
Hermaj, you can do it. Maybe if you have a sugar free and carb free few weeks, you will shift the remaining weight. Michael describes amazing weight loss by people who gave up all carbs. They did it by eating mainly protein and vegetables and lots of water. Worth a read. 🌞🌞🌞🌞
Cheers, Bay
Hi Fast
I am roaring ready for next Wednesday. I felt like s**t all day yesterday until I had worked off the excess carbs. That book of Michaels spells it all out. What I did eat was a combo of eggs and coffee for breakfast, then tuna and salad for lunch. Then a salad plus tiny bit of pizza for dinner. Feeling much better today.
I am reducing my intake of any sweet stuff in prep for Lent. ☕️☕️🌺🌺☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
I hope Lichtle comes back for Lent.
Cheers, Bay
Morning all from an overcast and cool Perth. Lovely! Hopefully, we’ve sent all the sunshine to you up in the NH. I’m beaming lots of warmth your way…..
Happy, yes I did pay up which is why I was so cross – with myself. Haircut OK but more like a shearing really.
Oh dear FFS, only 10 days until Lent? I’d thought it was a sort of Eastery April type thing and I’d have a few months to psych myself up. I need to buy the Blood Sugar book. I still haven’t read ‘I Quit Sugar’ which I’ve owned for months.
This week I got my blood results from my GP taken last November which was the first time I’d been tested since starting 5:2 16 months previously. I was hoping for ammunition to convince OFMs to reduce their added sugar intake. Instead I’ve had to file them away quietly and say nothing. Quite disappointing in that, although all were in the normal range, there were no dramatic decreases and even some slight increases.
The day I had the tests done, I didn’t rush to the lab at opening time as I would normally, (desperate for that first coffee of the day), because it was a FD anyway. Instead I sauntered in mid-morning after the rush all self-righteous and not having consumed anything for 15 hours. The nurse commented that I may have over-fasted. Does anyone have any insight into what affect this could have?
My other explanation is that, in the past, I’d probably have modified my food type in the days leading up to getting my blood tested to get a better result whereas this time I remember just feeling confident that a ‘normal’ snapshot would still yield a good improvement in the figures. Am I looking for excuses when perhaps there is just no explanation?
Sunday FD for me today too Purple & FFS and looking forward to tomorrow’s weigh-in.
Hello everyone, I’m back from Brisbane and babysitting duties. I have been enjoying the posts immensely but haven’t contributed as not a lot to report really and not much time.
No scales in Brisbane and no FD only mindful eating (with a wee bit of not so mindful😊) and weighed when I got home and 400g below trigger point.
Something I can contribute to Hermaj is bays advice re sugar and carb free helping weight loss. I have recently had a very persistent UTI not eradicated at all by anti biotics. I went to the Chinese doctor for acupuncture and she told me not to eat grains or sugar while I had the infection. I didn’t have any grains or sugar for 5 days and lost 2kg in the 5 days. I had fasted on the Monday, went to doctors on Tuesday, omitted grains and sugar straight away and by the Sunday had lost 2kg. I was astounded! By Sunday I also had a really bad headache so introduced a piece of fruit. When I returned to the doctor she said the headache was actually withdrawal from the sugar whereas I had assumed it was a side effect of ketosis.
Could be worth a try for you. I know that despondent feeling when we are trying so hard but not seeing as great an effect as we wish for. I’ve known for a long while it’s quite often not just the amount we eat but what we eat. 😊
Michaels book is actually titled The 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet. He maintains the research shows that giving up sugars and grains for 8 weeks can reduce diabetes type 2 and result in great weight loss. Well worth a read. Sorry I sound like a sales agent, but I was pretty impressed. Cheers, Bay ☀️☀️☀️☀️🌺🌺
Thanks, bay and carolann, for your advice re carbs. I’m already very vigilant on carbs and only eat anything containing the beastly things in the evening, otherwise I feel very unwell. The holiday incident was just sheer stupidity. I rarely use sugar and avoid grains as far as possible, leading to domestic conflict when I won’t eat OH’s home-baked bread. I’ve more or less given up on pasta, which I haven’t tasted since September when it was one the deadly three servings of carbs. Even on non-fast days I frequently use Zero Noodles or Slim Rice instead of the real deal – although sod’s law probably says they are also carbs. I’m also extremely careful about fat content.
Refined carbs are easy to avoid but I would find it extremely hard to do without pulses and those veggies with some level of carb content, e.g. carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes or butternut squash. Each of these I eat maybe at one or two meals a week, including in FD dinners. Even on NFDs I still try to make the evening under ca.500 cals. There are shedloads of appropriate recipes to be found online, or in cookbooks, including the excellent 5:2 ones. Certainly my no carbs at lunchtime policy (I don’t eat breakfast) got me off the last plateau, after which I lost one measly kilo in the whole of 2015, so the 10 lbs a year isn’t strictly correct. The correct figures are 13 kilos in two years, one kilo in one,
To tell the truth, I’m on the point of packing it in. Not to resort to face-stuffing or junk-food eating – I actively dislike or can easily do without a very large percentage of the bad stuff -, but to continue to practise the healthy habits instilled by 3 years of 5:2 but to stop worrying about not losing weight and stay off the expletive deleted scales. This huge sense of frustration and failure already has me teetering on the edge of the depression to which I’m occasionally prone.
Like you, carolann, I’m into acupuncture and regularly see a British practitioner who studied in China. She has become a very good friend and is my first port of call when I have any health concerns. She would also be honest enough to tell me if I should go to a mainstream doc. Hasn’t happened yet. Even when I have no problems healthwise, I go along at least once a month just to get energised.
In the nearly six years (before anyone had heard of 5:2) since I showed up at her practice with a big steroids-induced moon face and huge flabby body, she has seen the whole process of change brought about by this WOE. She tells me that, according to all the Chinese-medicine-based soundings she takes at each visit, I’m in excellent nick. 🙂
Hermaj, you are in ‘excellent nick’, you’ve lost about 2 stone iin real money, you’re clearly clued up and well- nourished, your clothes fit and you look good. As long as all those things continue to be the case, it might be that depression is too great a price to pay for more weight loss. You have health, humour and intellect, and your beauty is your own, not a skinny model copy. ‘Maintenance’ might mean exactly what it says – rejoicing in what you’ve achieved, and doing just enough not to go backwards – and doing it whatever way you damn well like!
Fast, you’re a pal. You say some gratifying things and your words are wise. Him Indoors came up with a similar response. If I’m not losing on 5:2, but, importantly, not regaining weight either, come off the regime, at least for a while, but don’t take my eye off the ball. In other words, keep on maintaining.
As you and I have found, falling off the wagon with an almighty thump, stuffed full of naughty so-called goodies, is enough to ensure abstemiousness for some time to come.
When it comes to BMI, who sets the standards? Not so long ago 27.5 was the top end of the healthy weight range. Then the medical establishment moved it to 25, no doubt encouraged by Big Pharma, who could then dole out sweeties to be fed to the new cohort who suddenly found themselves overweight and at risk of health complications. Same applies to BP measurements. What was once acceptable is now “pre-hypertension”.
What I may do is take hubby’s and your advice for a few weeks, then maybe aim to hit BMI 27.5 before the end of the year. The pre-depressive feeling might have little or nothing to do with the seemingly stuck scales. It’s just that the failure to remove the flab makes it worse. I find it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between depression and fatigue. It may be no more than an Eeyore moment, possibly brought on by some recent weird sleep patterns, which a touch of St John’s Wort, some beautiful music – see my profile for the many different genres I find “beautiful” – and a good book, plus a calendar sprinkled with upcoming meetings with good mates – old and new 🙂 – will be enough to get back on course again. Notice I didn’t include a big slice of cake or a huge bag of chips – fortunately I don’t do comfort eating.
Well in that case, you can give most of us lessons, whatever your BMI. See – you’re obviously the sanest of the lot of us! ‘Bien dans ta peau’ is a lovely aspiration, perhaps?
Good thinking, Him Indoors – but don’t desert the thread, will you? Bay and I will need help with the sugar-free Lent (yes, thin, it’s early this year – Easter on March 27) – and in my case, discouragement from indulging in a ‘waste not, want not’ Mardi Gras on Shove Tuesday. (A ritual cleansing of the house from forbidden foods is one thing; disposal by eating, quite another.) Perhaps I should be grateful that this week’s fall from grace will be recent enough for the memory to keep me in order.
Re St John’s wort – if it works for you, great. I took it for a few winters, and it worked well. Last year and this, I’ve discovered that a hefty dose of Vit D works even better. Worth a try?
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3:09 am
28 Jan 16