Hi Happy, Maybe the digetive system still works during calorie restriction and wants more, whereas it seems to me as if it turns the system off after certain amount of not receiving any food.

BTW what did you think of the programme about sugar last night? I was pretty disappointed – nothing we didn’t know. I thought there would be new scientific research as in what happens to our organs, skin etc.

Yes, some of the sugar content in food was higher than I expected (ginger beer, which have never tasted) but that was all.
I found the clip where she complained to the food standard agency that some packaging had traffic light system and others showed sugar content in g/portion was rather embarrassing especially since she asked for sugar to be recorded in teaspoons so people could “understand better”.

Hi Lichtle,

Yes, nothing we didn’t know really but interesting nonetheless! I must admit I was surprised at how much sugar there was in some foods that intuitively you would expect to contain little or none. As I don’t buy cakes or biscuits, or eat cereals or ready meals, or drink juice or fizzy drinks, much of the info was from an interested observer perspective though.

What always amazes me is the diets of some people! The woman with the 4 year old appeared to eat nothing with anything nutritional value, and little that wasn’t chocolate!

On the subject of labelling with number of teaspoons of sugar, I thought it was a fair point that there should be consistency of labelling. If you’re shopping, in a rush, maybe tired and harassed by the kids, and you buy a lot of processed food (!), you might use the traffic light system but get caught out by the packaging that appears to use the same symbols but not colours (at a glance you see it isn’t red, so assume it’s a safe option). And while labelling it in teaspoons might seem a bit noddy, it would put it in a context that most people would understand…

I must admit I didn’t know how many g per 100g constituted ‘high sugar’, but then I don’t really need to as my diet mostly contains no added sugar. I make a loaf at the weekend (1tsp) and biscuits perhaps every other weekend (probably 10g per ‘serving’). OH has sugar in tea or coffee, so I reckon he goes over 6-8tsp each weekend day just from drinks alone.

I appreciate the programme didn’t teach you anything new, but then it wasn’t aimed at people like you who already have a good understanding of the subject. And yes, there was obviously a lot more they could have said about the perils of sugar.

The programme you wanted would have been a much heavier, fact-filled (and drier 🙂 ) affair though, which would have had the majority of viewers switching channels I’m afraid! This was prime time BBC1 after all…

Before you can educate people, you have to engage them, and hopefully last night’s programme would have done that and raised awareness.

I think you are giving the majority of the population more credit than they deserve if you think most people would not have learned something 🙂

Hi
I obviously didn’t see the program, but we have had similar here in Australia. The labelling issue is also hot here.

When we started 5:2 nearly 2 years ago, Mr P made a spreadsheet listing the contents and calorie count of the foods we ate. We added to it regularly. It gave us a very good understanding about how many “extras” are in many processed foods. It was a wonderful help as we began our journey towards health. Some would call it reinventing the wheel, we didn’t join the forum for another year, but the act of entering each food brought the message down powerfully.

The bread I make has no sugar, but yesterday I added cinnamon, walnuts and dates to the sourdough. It rose about 40% higher and is phenomenally light. It must have been the fructose in the dates. Even yeast appreciates a little sugar! 😉

Saturday morning here. Rainy and I had to do an emergency dash to the shop for cat food. Ran out yesterday. Madam VERY unimpressed with human tuna and basil in brine 🙁 P

Purple, that bread sounds delicious. I would have never thought of adding dates or cinnamon to bread. Although one of the best and mosr aromatic bread I have ever eaten was a sourdough rye bread made with anise seed, caraway seed, fennel seed, molasses and the zest of one orange. Mmm :-))

Hi P,

I never was a calorie counter, except for getting an understanding of what 500 calories for a fast day looked liked. But since starting 5:2 I have become more aware of calories. But sugar and salt less so, because I don’t add them to food and rarely eat anything I haven’t cooked (or wasn’t home cooked by someone I trust not to poison me!)

It has definitely been a journey though (and continues to be) from gaining weight, to reaching a weight I wasn’t happy with yet feeling powerless to do anything about it, then finding 5:2 and getting control of my weight, and then becoming increasingly interested in how to optimize nutrition in the pathetically reduced amount of calories it now takes to maintain me!

I must admit I do wonder where this journey will take us! Maybe we will end up 130 year old CRONs!

Hmm, if you want to avoid long life I think you’ll need to watch the diet then P… And the moderate drinking! More processed food! More alcohol!

Sugar free Lent is working for me, in that it allows me to fast 6:1 and remain on low weight. Thanks Lichtle and Fast, I wouldnt have done it without you. And I wouldnt have stuck to it without you. Even now I can hear the sweets calling to me. 😉

Watching Martin Guptill of NZ have a fantastic innings in cricket World Cup. 237 off around 160 balls. First 100 runs came from 111 balls. Last 137 runs came from around 50 balls. Wow!

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Well maintainers, shocking news! I ended this week heavy! Post Christmas weight no less! Still under upper threshold weight (just!), but not enough wriggle room to accommodate a weekend…

I’ve been trying to think what’s been different this week, and I can only think that after the Monday (proper) fast I mentally relaxed and ate more than normal. I haven’t been doimg 5:2 or even 6:1 to maintain, and I don’t count calories, but I guess I must have been unconsciously exercising some degree of CR during the week (in the absence of fasting) which I perhaps didn’t this week following a proper fast.

Anyway, damage limitation this weekend, a bit less alcohol, no sweet treats, and a bit more exercise…

And next week, at least one fast…

.

Absolutely right Carol and Happy
Like democracy, we have to be eternally vigilant; ) P

Oh, Happy, what a service you’re doing the rest of us, reminding us how easily it could all go pear-shaped (or in my case, apple-shaped) again…but as others have said, you are knowledgable and skilled at pulling it back and putting it right, so I’m sure you will do it. Good luck!

I will join you in having a treat-free w/e, and would like to draw a veil over my eating habits this week. I’ve been with my Ma – always affects my eating, not just due to her dreadful diet but also a whole heap of emotional history – and let’s just say I ‘transferred’ sunday forward to St Patrick’s day, and then sinned a bit more, out of sheer ‘weakness, negligence and my own deliberate fault’, and don’t deserve a Sunday!! so far I seem to have got away with it, weight-wise, but I often find a binge catches up with me a few days later, rather than immediately, so we’ll see.

No time or privacy at Mum’s even to post here, so I’m rejoining the flock today, and will fast with you, Happy.. Glad everyone else is thriving, and good to be back on board.

Hi Happy

I am curious that you don’t seem to be doing one fast day a week for health reasons. Is there a reason?

Because my Dad developed Alzheimer’s I am always going to be fasting a minimum of 6:1 for health reasons. In addition if I want a treat, I then will need to fast a second day. I look forward to my fast days, and to that clear light feeling in my body.

Sugar free is a bonus. 😉 Yesterday, I was given a lovely looking home made chocolate nut slice to freeze until I can enjoy a small piece after Easter.

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Bay, you’re not alone. DH and I had lunch out on Friday, at a supremely good farm shop with a mega-attractive display of homemade cakes -as wholesome as anything cakey can be- just inside the entrance. I managed to bypass them, and enjoyed a really good beef lasagne with very imaginative salads, followed by a small pot of grapes, but couldn’t help noticing how automatically my eyes – and salivary glands – were drawn by them. You’re right: 1 fast day for health reasons – my mum also has Alzheimer’s, as well as obesity and heart problems, and I know enough about diabetes to try to avoid it – and a second to counterbalance any Sunday treats. It will never be easy, but I’m convinced it’s worth it. I’m so glad that what started as a ‘hey, what about if we tried….? ‘has been valuable for you.

A?hat a lovely problem to have, Happy! Happy Monday fast!

I agree, vigilance and weighing regularly is really the key to maintaining. Even if we don’t throw in a fast day immediately, it registers and we subconsciously adjust our eating. Happy, I think if you go into the menopause not having to lose weight is such a bonus. Even if it sometimes seems that maintaining is more difficult, I think it is so much easier. Of course our weight will fluctuate but a couple of pounds are not too difficult to lose.

FFS, many mother daughter relationships are “complicated”. Mine has definitely improved as we both got older. However, whenever I discuss diet with my mother, she reprimants me for not having breakfast or for fasting, because she eats about 6 small meals a day and is not overweight. But I got her to finally see that due to the fact that she was and still is ill very often she goes through spells of enforced fasting (she can’t face any food for days) and loses all the weight she has gained in the meantime. Looking at it from that angle I am glad I have my health and rather do “voluntary” fasting.

FFS and Bay, there is no way that I will ever not like sweet food (especially anything fruity), the hardest for me is not to finish off my bread and cheese snack/breakfast with a piece of bread and jam. It is such a habit that it is like listening to a piece of music and not getting the final note that rounds of the piece of music. So I’d rather not eat bread at all. My Sunday exemption, I am afraid to say, started on Saturday evening :-((. I went over the top yesterday (savoury and sweet) and as you can imagine, I am fasting today, too. Good luck everyone.

Happy, I am surprised – do you sometimes crave sugar? I thought you were immune to the sweet stuff. :-))

There’s a useful formula (which I’ve come across before, but afraid I can’t remember chapter and verse, and anyway you put it so much better, Happy): ‘sugar + protein = less damage than sugar alone’. I seem to recall that it wasn’t just about adding protein to reduce the space for sugar – there was actually a real difference in the way sugar is metabolised when accompanied by protein. Moral: avoid added sugar whenever you can – but if you really must, add some protein to minimise damage’! Sorry to be so vague – perhaps someone else can supply the hard info?

Hi FFS,

Better nut chocolate than cheese chocolate though!

Nearer 600 calories than 500, but a fast nonetheless! I held out til mid afternoon, but then had to eat something. A yoghurt and fruit, for a respectable 200 calories. But a bit later I heard noises at the end of the kitchen and went to investigate…and found a sad and lonely piece of cheese in the fridge gently crying my name… Anyway, I’ve finished the day with low cal plain fish and green vegetables.

I’m aiming for a light week, and possibly another fast later in the week, so maybe that was why the cheese slightly sabotaged me today!

Think next year I’ll have to try cheese-free Lent!

How’s your fast been?

We crossed posts Happy.
I understand the calling cheese completely! That’s why I went cold turkey on cheese in 2013. I slowly re-introduced parmesan, used sparingly after about 6 months. When we reached goal, 12 months ago, I took up buying other cheeses again. They kept going mouldy in the fridge as we had cured ourselves of the need to add it to everything. I have a blue sitting in there now, I used a little in a stuffed mushroom last weekend, but I’m afraid it will be binned soon. In the past, we would have had a whole packet of crackers and most of a block of cheese as a pre-dinner snack during the weekend. Oh, and a bottle of wine. 😉 Even on week nights, I’d have biscuits and cheese, with a glass of red, as I cooked dinner in the bad old days..

Habits can be changed. Life can still be full of lovely foods. Just without the weight! P

P, I so agree with the ‘quality, not quantity’ mantra: I frequently take 1 bite of something (not, of course, if I’ve cooked it!) and discard the rest as ‘not worth the calories’. It used to go against the grain for a woman brought up on ‘waste not, want not’, but these days I try to think of calories as I do money – you get what you pay for, and when it’s scarce, all the more reason to make sure you spend every penny or calorie on something wonderful. I’ve learned not to buy a piece of clothing unless it makes me look and feel fantastic – I’m learning to treat food the same way.

A good fast day today, Happy – within 500 Cals, and a hard hour of Pilates ( with the dreaded toning circles) to use a few of them, Now that my weight has dropped, my fasting Cals should be nearer 350, but I’m not often up (or down?) to that. But 500 seems to keep me to maintenance weight, and hopefully doesn’t compromise health benefits, so I’m content.

Agree with you both about cheese: it does have a penetrating and persuasive voice, doesn’t it? I too have only just gone back to buying it, and -apart from fancy cheese bought for guests – the everyday stuff gets grated and stored in freezer. Probably heresy, but we eat less of it that way!

Hi Lichtle,

Good work on the fast.

I find the same as you, some days you have to force yourself to eat, some days you have to force yourself to stop! I’m not sure if there’s a particular thing I’m craving on those days, and I can’t now remember if it happened this way pre-5:2. It seems though that perhaps pre-5:2 the ‘background noise’ of constant food masked a lot of what really goes on with nutrition and hunger?

Gosh Happy, I know some people claim vegetables scream as they are pulled out of the ground, but your food sounds deafening!
You are right, though, fasting gives one pause for thought. A time to step back and assess what is being consumed. 🙂

P, your cheese strategy started the same way as mine did – kids! You reminded me of the time I got home from work at 3am on Christmas Day to find DS no 1 had come home from the pub somewhat tanked, eaten all the cheese I’d bought for the family party on Boxing Day and slipped into a deep sleep NOT his grandest moment – but one of the best-remembered by all his loved ones!

FFS, that is just such a man thing though isn’t it? Tanked or not, to eat ALL of something! You or I would wonder if this foodstuff, especially at a time like Christmas, was bought for a particular purpose. And we would also think, I won’t eat it all, because someone else might want some. And if there wasn’t much to begin with, we would probably decide not to have any because there wasn’t much… Oh to think (or not 🙂 ) like a man…