Dear Franfit and Auriga Firstly thanks to Franfit for pointing me to this link, it’s extremely interesting. I’ve been doing 5:2 since 15th Feb and have gone from 150 lbs (10st10) to 129 lbs (9.3) in 16 weeks, I’m 5ft 4ins tall. I’ve been a bit of a yo yo dieter all my adult life really ranging from 9.7 – 10.7 but usually staying around the 10st mark. I really feel with the 5:2 though that I’ve cracked it and that I will reach goal and stay there. I haven’t been this slim in 20 years, I feel great actually and, dare I admit to feeling a little smug! I agree with you Auriga, being overweight is now the norm and I do feel really good about achieving this weight loss. Isn’t it funny how we are so happy to quickly get rid of the too big clothes but hang onto the too small ones for donkeys years!

I divide my time between Greece and London, having homes in both countries – I’m retired but have a disable daughter to care for so life is not always easy but spending the summer in Greece we have a wonderful lifestyle and there’s a lot of swimming and beach so added incentive to be slim. I’m looking forward to hearing more from everybody on maintaince and although I’m not quite there – another five weeks to go I imagine – I hope to pick up lots of tips and inspiration from you guys. I’ve recently been using MyFitnessPal to help keep track of my calories, it’s a free app and I’ve found it really helps I haven’t yet found any food that can’t be tracked and automatically added up. With only a few more pounds to lose, I’ve found I need to stick to 1,200 for 5 days and if course 500 for 2! Anyway I’m looking forward to chatting with everybody here again soon. Enjoy France Auriga 🙂

Good evening Dr Micheal’s success story tellers, I have fasted today and tomorrow I will be doing my second Nordic walking in the morning and bowling tin he afternoon hoping to be good has there is a meal provided I still want to be at goal on Tuesday.
( Sorry if I am repeating myself but I am not sure if anyone reads the other threads, LOACA and Jojo hope you will forgive if you read it all before.)
Good night all.
JIP

Dear HappyNow, Like you wine was my weakness but I’ve found that with the restricted calories and the weight loss I just can’t tolerate it so much now and it makes me soooo hungry so I try to avoid it opting for the odd beer instead which I find less addictive and more sustaining. Saying that, Ive just returned from a big fat Greek bapism where the wine flowed like water and an awful lot of it my way!! It sounds like you are struggling to get under the dreaded 60 kgs mark? I’ve finally managed to break that barrier and actually I didn’t believe it would be possible for me to do so but I did it on the 5:2! I’ve said to my Greek friends that losing weight in kilograms is much harder psychologically as 10lbs and 1 stone is less to lose than 10 kilos! I’m so glad I’ve found this forum as losing the weight is only half the battle, keeping it off is going to be the real challange….

My Iphone went “funny” that last line should have read that I’m finding this forum both fascinating and inspirational:-)

Hi HappyNow, Oh dear, I didn’t mean to make you feel you should lose more! I totally agree with you that we should aim to feel good in our own skin and at whatever weight works for us. I started out aiming to get under 10 stone, when I’d achieved that, I decided to aim to get under 130lbs, then under 60kgs and now I feel if I can weigh less than 9st – I will be happy and will go onto maintaince. The least I’ve ever weighed was 8st 11lbs but I believe that’s a bit low but I think 8.13 is achievable and will give me a maintaince ceiling of 9st. Weight is such an individual thing, and we are all built differently so even women of the same weight and hight won’t be the same build. It’s wonderful to find what suits you and feel confident with that and I really didn’t mean to imply that you should be under 60kgs. Well done on what you’ve achieved, we are all doing this for ourselves and our goals arn’t, nor should they be, the same 🙂

Good morning, maintenance buddies! Sorry for not posting yesterday, I just felt really tired after working in the morning, so I spent the afternoon reading part of “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney, which is an extremely interesting, if somewhat technical, book, until time to cook my fasting-day dinner of some beautiful dark red wild sockeye salmon, asparagus, green salad, and fresh local strawberries.

Found out one reason why I might have been feeling tired lately this morning, when I got on the scale and it registered 114, I had never seen that number before, had seen 115 only once before, on Saturday, so, after weight loss slowing as I neared my goal, I must have suddenly dropped between one and two pounds of fat. I guess I should back off of fasting a bit more! I decided no more fasting days this week unless I go over 117, the mid-point of my maintenance range, for sure. It’s going to feel extremely strange, fasting only one day a week. Maybe I’ll do at least one 16:8 with no calorie restriction, just so the change doesn’t feel too radical.

I agree that each person’s goal weight is a very individual thing, and also difficult to decide on if you’ve been heavier than you like for a long time. I thought I wanted to get back to my baseline young adult weight, but that turned out to be too little for me at my current age and fitness level, I decided to maintain about 12 pounds above that, from 115-119. We all have different skeletons, different degrees of musculature, carry our weight in different parts of our bodies, etc. And there is some evidence that being very lean but not fit is not especially healthy at any age, but especially not as we get older. So replacing fat with muscle is good, but just getting really skinny, maybe not.

I also think measuring in pounds gives more encouragement when losing weight — although, if you’ve used kilos all your life, I think suddenly more than doubling the number that your weight is would feel super-discouraging! I just pull out my calculator when people post numbers I’m not used to, lol. For some reason I have trouble converting stones to pounds in my head.

I really did not think I would fast fewer than 2 days a week this early into maintenance, need reassurance, please! Auriga, I think all of us here now want to keep this a supportive thread, believe we can do so 🙂

Auriga/Franfit I love reading your posts but pray tell me, what’s 16:8@50%? I’m struggling this weekend, what with attending a big fat Greek baptism yesterday and entertaining friends to a full roast English dinner today (including Yorkshire pudding) I really have fallen off the wagon! Think I may have to do a back to back two day fast starting tomorrow if I’m to gain ground – says she swigging on yet another glass of vino…

Dear FranFit/Augira, Thanks for clarifying 16/8, I feel rather embarresed that I didnt figure it out for myself, especially as I have read Michael’s book. Also the friend who introduced me to the Fast Diet, pointed out that I’ve been unwittingly fasting for years as I never eat breakfast and therefore regularly go 16 hours without eating. However, I have been severely criticised for this by a lot of people, even so I point out that I’m never hungry in the morning and that eating breakfast just adds to my calorie intake as it doesn’t prevent me eating more later and anyway the average breakfast is cereal based hence carbs and sugar and thus not particularly healthy and I suspect that the myth of “breakfast being the most important meal of the day” is endorsed by multi conglomerates to promote their products. Like you FranFit, I need my morning coffee. Anyway, thank you for enlightening me on all the different ways of approaching fasting.

Dear FranFit interesting what you say about the skipping breakfast disorganisation theory, put like that it makes sense. Also true about being easily misunderstood when communicating via mail, especially when tired and we are all working on different time-lines. I was writing at 1am yesterday whilst for my UK buddies it was 11pm, not sure what the difference is for you. I would never criticise anybody’s regime – we are all different and one size doesn’t fit all, what works for one won’t necessarily work for another but this forum does throw up advice and tips that may enlighten and help us achieve our goals:-)

Hi Elainefriend. I’m afraid it’s too late to take it back!! I will now have to see what under 60 looks like! I’m guessing it won’t be that much different to 61…?!

I too was an unwitting 16:8er in my 30s. I’m guessing it was no coincidence that I was maintaining a healthy weight then. Unfortunately I then got brainwashed and bullied into believing that eating ‘breakfast’ early in the morning was the right thing to do, even though I’m not naturally hungry til mid morning (my Dad even told me I should get up earlier so I would be hungry at breakfast time!)

I think there probably is truth in the saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but who decided that break fast was first thing in the morning? Kellogg maybe!? I now choose to break my fast when I’m hungry, not when I’m told I should eat, and no one can tell me that’s wrong. Oh OK, they can, but I’m not listening. La la la la can’t hear you….

Dear FranFit, I’ve also developed a bit of loose skin, arms, tummy, legs, it’s putting me off going much lower. I have read that some of the skin will fill back out – after about a year and building a bit of muscle to replace the lost fat will help – I’ve had to put that on hold for a bit having pulled my shoulder by being to vigorous with resistance bands! I guess having got used to fasting for weeks on end, it must take some adjusting to stopping it. Amazing how quickly we can get used to new routines until the point that they become common place! I can quite see how tempting it might be to lose just a bit more, then a bit more, especially if one has been struggling with a weight issue for years, it almost doesn’t feel quite real to find something that actually gets it off, it’s empowering and liberating. I think modern images of stick thin women can really distort our body images, to the point where we women develop body-dysmorphia. That’s where this forum helps we are real women, speaking to real woman, swapping our trials and tribulations and reassuring ourselves that all’s well and we are doing OK :-))

Well well HappyNow, Haven’t you been hiding your light under a bushel! 5ft 6ins, 61kgs and only 40 yrs old – you’re practically a supermodel compared to the rest of us. There is a lot of reflective confessing happening here so whilst we are at it, my bare legs now look like I’m wearing wrinkled stockings, and my once tight leggings now resemble baggy pajamas! I can’t lift my arms in the wind – people think I’m performing semaphore but its just the old bingo wings flapping about! But, lets also tell what we love about our new bodies! I have to say that I love feeling my hip and rib bones but what I admire most of the new me is having lost all the back fat – I’m still amazed at my side view as there is now no longer any spillover at the back nor front of my bar and although I don’t have much of a bum, without all the saggy hanging back fat, I now have more definition and my bum looks more curved! I don’t mind admitting I like what I see! Has anyone found that it can take longer deciding what to wear for a night out because everything fits and we are spoilt for choice – before it was a case of wearing anything that made us look a bit slimmer! I did a really good fast day yesterday and will do the same today got to join my maintaince buddies ASAP. Good luck with your blood tests Augira and thank you for starting this link – I feel some bonding happening here with all our honesty:-)

Elainefriend. 40, I wish! No its 46……

While there are obviously downsides to communicating online, one good thing is that you are communicating with the inner person not the outer shell. We’re not defined by appearances here. We’re ageless.

And from reading everyone’s posts, the issues don’t really change with age anyway! It seems to be a continuum of changes (and of degrees of change) and just as you come to terms with some of them (thinking of my eye wrinkles, which I detested through my 30s) and think you’re not looking too bad for your age….oh no, what’s this?! Are my jowls starting to sag? Where’s my chest going? When did that wrinkly belly appear? And whether it’s the first wrinkle or the hundredth, it’s still an unwelcome change to adjust to….

Franfit. Re: being comfortable naked. If you meet the right someone, he should be looking past the outer you. If he wants pert and firm, he can try his luck with a 20 year old (in his dreams!). And, unless he’s in the first flush of youth (or Brad Pitt?!), he’s got his own body issues (and increasingly pendulous parts) to be insecure about.

Auriga. I managed to get blood work done recently only by virtue of being a new patient following a Dr surgery change. There is high blood pressure and cholesterol in the family (and also bowel and breast cancer, which I hope fasting can also help me avoid). Also I realised after overindulging one night on pudding, after weeks of abstinence, that I felt really peculiar and ill all over and started to worry about my insulin/ blood sugar (and I’d read the stuff which suggests fasting may not be beneficial for women’s health). Anyway, results came back normal, so I appear to be bucking the national trend of being pre-diabetic. Good luck with your results.

Well, work beckons. Good luck everyone maintaining today!

Dear Auriga, I agree that retirement is wonderful, I can’t think how I found the time to go out to work! However, saying that, I did take early retirement in order to care for my daughter who developed a particularly severe form of MS in her thirties. It is hard at times, but, it doesn’t stop us having fun! I also have a hubby, who has started to make noises along the lines of “getting too skinny” however, he does on the other hand do a lot more playful bum slapping so im actually getting mixed messages from him! Anyway I’m doing this to pleased me and I feel happier than I have done for years.

HappyNow, it’s true that each stage of life throws up different challanges. As for me, youth was completely wasted on me, I was so full of anxiety and self-doubt, it took me until I was about 45 to feel happy and confident in my own skin and stop apologising to everyone for self-perceived inadequacies! I’m enjoying life now, wrinkles an all and it’s wonderful to be able to keep learning, growing, changing, experiencing and making new friends – youth – it’s overrated if you ask me….

I have not been keeping up and now find I haven’t got time to read all the new material on this thread, so have just skimmed through it – anyway I just wanted to say I have read ‘Fat Chance’ by Dr Robert Lustig and OMG my eyes have been opened! I knew that sugar was really bad but now I understand more precisely why, and how it works on our metabolisms. Not surprisingly I have REALLY cut down on my sugar intake this week! I am hoping it is going to reduce my cravings and make maintenance easier if I can stick to it. I won’t be able to cut it out altogether, but I intend to restrict sugary foods to one or two days a week, and always after a healthy, high fibre meal.

@elainefriend

“surely its part of the human condition to occasionally experience hunger it’s perfectly natural and necessary. ”

I believe that we need to be continuously stimulated. Eating food is one way. Another form of gratification, that I’m discovering, is clarity and focus. There are other forms that many are discovering.

Being hungry is natural and we can use it as a trigger to expand our world.

➰

Hi everyone, wasn’t it nice of Mimi to contribute to our thread. I hope she has a nice holiday because all of us on here will be able have a nice guilt free holiday indulging in the nice things of life, I am sure you may all know by now mine will a be Rum and diet coke and a few French sticks something I have been keeping away from while being a WW. I now know it can be eaten on my non fasting days occasionally.
I am still going to my Weight Watchers meetings every Tuesday morning I have been at goal or within 5 pounds for 3 years.
In the three years I have been at goal I have only paid 3 times and then only going over by 1 or 2 lbs or so.
I still have good friends who are at goal or still on their road to their goal and I count it as a coffee morning.
I am here to stay, 5-2 as changed my way of thinking and I have dieted all my life. JIP

Good morning, maintaining buddies! Mimi, thanks for stopping in — what a pleasure to ‘meet’ you 🙂 I’m happy to report that I’m still at 114.8 pounds this morning, and the new loose skin seems to be tightening up a bit already. I’ve been trying to get my extra calories in maintenance from protein and fat rather than carbs. Then last night my son made a new recipe, polenta with sweet corn, omg it was *amazingly* good with butter, basil and parmesan cheese! Well, if I had to eat carbs, at least it was locally-ground whole-grain polenta and sweet corn fresh from Florida.

Then he asked me if I was reading anything interesting, I told him yes, ‘The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living,’ and explained about high-carb diets leading to too-high insulin levels that keep fat locked up in fat cells instead of being able to be burned for energy, how that keeps people hungry and eating and drives a lot of the obesity epidemic. He thought it was really interesting. I explained about whole-food carbs being fine as part of a mixed meal for most people, but that this is why processed high-carb foods make people hungry a couple of hours later, that this is why he makes himself a bacon and egg burrito for breakfast and finds breakfast cereal more useful as a snack than as a meal — but that for me, being older, even for a snack I need cheese or nuts or something with more protein and fat in it. He totally got it. I was really pleased, since he does more than half of the cooking around here! Of course we’ll have the polenta with sweet corn again anyway, it was fantastic, and I can make sure I balance it with the parmesan cheese I put on top. And I doubt that he’ll quit making ice cream, lol, he does do that well. I’m glad that I don’t seem to be super carb-intolerant. I really should wait until I get some blood work done to be sure of that, though, I guess.

StraR, yes, I think a lot of us have noticed that sugar, refined carbs, even whole-food carbs in excess or by themselves can cause us problems!

JIP, congratulations on staying at your WW goal for another week 🙂

Auriga, did you know that the research now shows that total LDL cholesterol is not a reliable marker of risk for heart disease or anything bad — that too-low LDL levels might even be undesirable in women in our age group? Keeping triglycerides low and HDL up are worthy goals, according to current research, but with LDL it’s all about the fractions, which they never measure because it’s too difficult/expensive. Nevertheless official guidelines and most doctors continue to think that lowering total LDL is a good idea. It’s not. I plan on continuing to ignore mine, lol. Your doc does sound quite ignorant, thinking that statins would lower triglycerides. That’s pretty weird.

Elainefriend, I know what you mean about worrying that you didn’t accomplish what you set out to do. I originally thought that I wanted to get back to 105 pounds. But, looking at me now, it’s difficult to believe that I ever could have looked good at that weight (although I did — when I was 17 and 27). It took me a few weeks of obsessing before I came to the conclusion that I did not need to get all the way down to that weight before deciding to re-gain 10 or 12 pounds because I just looked too skinny and didn’t feel good. When my weight suddenly dropped 117 – 115 – 114 in five days, I did *not* feel good, don’t think it made me look good, either. *If* I was more fit, a lower weight might look good — but it might not, at 57. It’s possible that, if I’m able to get more fit, I should let my weight rise by up to five pounds, since muscle is heavier than fat. So, it took a while, but I do not feel like I ‘gave up’ too soon because I was fed up with losing weight, I believe I made a decision based on more information to revise my original goal, and feel good about my accomplishment now. I am fascinated by weight-loss programs that set goals for people and wonder how they choose the weight targets they do. When you’ve been heavy for decades (as I have been), it’s just difficult to know what exact weight is appropriate at our current age. I think we have to feel our way to what works for each of us. The ‘normal’ BMI range is so wide — which I do think is a good thing, because we’re all different.

Happy fasting to anyone who’s fasting today 🙂

Hi franfit and Maintenance pals, I only ever wanted to get to 10 stone 7 lbs when I got there I wanted to get BMI down so I needed to get to 10.01 and now I want another few pounds, I will settle for that, I am showing lots of wrinkles which are also called laughter lines, they come with age anyway. LOL. JIP