Hi Fast and Lichtle

Congratulations on completing the sugar free challenge. It has been great fun and a good learning experience to find that I did not need to have any sweeteners in my life.

I’m writing this today, because from tomorrow I will mostly be out of range of wifi until Tuesday. Thanks for making this challenge a positive experience. I wouldn’t have thought of a sugar free Lent without your challenge and support. My heart sank at the idea I would go for six weeks without sugar. However, once I detoxed in the first 3.5 days, I enjoyed every bit of my sugar free days. I chose not to relax on Sundays. In case 😉

Unlike both of you, I don’t know how I will react when I have my first bit of sweet food on Sunday. 😮

I wish everyone a happy Easter.
Cheers, Bay 🙂

Well done Bay, you definitely did much better than I did but it really gives me hope that I will be able to give up one day, too. Next year’s sugar challenge should be: “no sugar and no Sunday exemption – six weeks straight” like you managed this time round.

These last few weeks, I still needed the Sundays but I hope that over time, I will manage to reduce sugar drastically.

Have a wonderful time and Happy Easter to you.

Bay – sorry, we crossed! You definitely get the medal! In your place I might be tempted not to re-start at all. Well done, indeed!

Happy Easted, everyone (but still 3 more sleeps yet!)

I agree with you Happy, If I had to or if there were some proven benefits of extended fasting over shorter fasts or intermittent fasting, I think I could do an extended fast quite happily.

Reading the article on the effect of fasting around cancer treatment it crossed my mind that in that case I would not hesitate to do an extended fast. I would try it as there is not really anything to lose but I would prepare well and do it in a considered way.

I liked the honest report of the different stages of fasting for Steve Hendrick. I am sure it is a bit different for everyone and I keep wondering how it was for the guy who fasted for over a year. after a certain time things must settle down and stay the same.

Well P,

mostly I am very envious of your fantastic weather (although I suspect it would be too hot for me), but you can keep your rain and your houseful of kids! Good luck! And amazing maintenance given the social schedule…

Lichtle,

I started reading the ebook you recommended today. Fascinating stuff. And I think links nicely to your comment about fasting and cancer treatment. It occurs to me that there are two aspects – fasting around chemo to reduce toxic side effects, and more general fasting while ‘living’ with cancer or indeed other disease or illness. There is an obsession with eating in this country, and a fear that people will be too weak to fight disease if they don’t eat. Increasingly it seems that mother nature does indeed know best! If you ain’t hungry, don’t eat!

There are definite benefits to extended fasting 3 plus days

There are risks and downsides to extended fasting. Fasting beyond 3 days is not something to be taken lightly and should only be done under a Drs direct supervision and care. Emotional disturbances can occur and these can be the least of your problems.

Do NOT try to carry on a normal daily routine if you are fasting beyond 3 days. There are dangers to yourself and to others. Your reactions may be grossly impaired, so don’t drive! In 3 days (or less) your brain has used up all the glycogen stores and the switch starts and your body and brain can change in ways that are unpredictable.

3 Days is doable and likely won’t cause problems for persons in good health. I do not recommend extended fasting to anyone. Just because I fast for 5 days once a month doesn’t mean that you should or can.

If you are going to undertake extended fasting read, learn, see your health professional, get a checkup discuss with your health care professional what you are going to do and why. If you have medical conditions high blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, or are pre-diabetic know that things are going to happen and be prepared. Have your health professional on speed dial. DO NOT be alone while undergoing extended fasting. If things go sideways they can go bad FAST. One hour you’re fine and the next you may be on another planet. Have your Dr. check you at least daily after 3 days.

I have done fasts to 10 days but I don’t see any reason to go beyond 5 for the health benefits of autolysis and autophagy and the cleansing effects to body. Spiritually there may be reasons to do more than 5 days.

I’m not a Dr. I don’t play one on TV and I don’t give health advice.

My suggestion is if you want to try extended fasting start slow. 2 day, then be reasonable on 5:2 for a month. Then try 3 days. Rest for a month be reasonable on 5:2 for a month. Then 4 days and rest be reasonable on 5:2 for a month.

The go slow approach is valuable. If at any time in your fast you feel in distress quit fasting. Your body is trying to tell you something. After 3 days you really won’t feel hungry physically (most likely anyway) hunger you do “feel” is likely in your mind.

Really 5:2 is proven and it is safe. Going outside the boundaries can lead to issues you haven’t even thought of. Deaths have occurred in fasting as little as 7 days. Usually tied to an underlying unknown medical condition.

KNOW how to re-feed after extended fasting. Don’t jump back into your regular diet. The consequences of doing so can be down right nasty. Not saying they will but they can be. Bloating and intestinal cramping can be the least of your issues.

If you have a reason to do extended fasting, learn how to do it, go slow and have the proper care and supervision then “maybe” you’ll be fine. Then again maybe not.

Hi QuietOne,

Thanks for the advice.

I have never done any extended periods of fasting, and I certainly wouldn’t just stop eating tomorrow and see how long I could last! And I wouldn’t do 5:2 AND a monthly 3 day fast. And at the present time I don’t have any obvious health issues.

I have been a healthy weight for over a year now, sustained principally by 16:8, low refined carbs, and occasional low cal fasts. I haven’t been doing 5:2, or even 6:1 regularly, since last June as I haven’t been able to maintain my weight that way. So I am currently doing less than 5:2 in terms of fasting, not more!

It is interesting though that fasting is a powerful tool which has been sidelined by conventional medicine for decades.

With respect, if I was considering a 3 day fast, I would not consult my healthcare professional! Frankly my doctor is an idiot who knows nothing about health other than it comes out of a bottle supplied by a major pharmaceutical company or is government policy. My doctor would just say don’t do it. Also, have you actually tried to get hold of a healthcare professional in England recently…?! A three day fast would be done and dusted long before I’d actually got to see my doctor 🙂

As I say, I don’t have a medical reason to fast. But if I did have a condition, and depending on what it was, I think I would have more confidence now to trust my gut instinct and not eat if I wasn’t hungry (on the basis that eschewing food would not quickly lead to death in the absence of an underlying condition).

Well my two fasts in the last two weeks seem to have done the trick as my weight has dropped from top end of my m’range to below 59.

Notwithstanding, I am mindful that today is not yet the weekend (although I did succumb to a few glasses of wine last night, due to not working today 🙂 ). So when OH had a bacon virtue this morning, I declined to join him. I’d like to still be under 59 tomorrow morning, so the bacon can wait…

I have bought some hot cross buns, mainly I think because the smell was being pumped through the aircon. But OH doesn’t like them and, now they’re sitting looking at me, I realise I don’t want 4. In fact I suspect that I don’t even really want one…

And no chocolate this Easter, for the second year running!

Hi Quiet One welcome and good advice. Thanks. . I would only do an extended fast in extraordinary circumstances like an illness which I felt was better dealt with by fasting and I would definitely research and get expert advice. I am sticking with 5:2 though for the time being.

FFS, I admire your charity!!! I think I will have a proper food festival this Easter weekend. I am going to bake a chocolate cake with cheese filling tomorrow and also bought HCBs and will bake some bread. My son is visiting us and therefore I have to pull out all the stops. I am planning to eat without a thought of lenting, fasting or calories. 🙂

Happy Easter everyone.

Firstly, congratulations all you sugar free for Lent ladies. You are amazing and have done an amazing job! Wether you now choose to include or not include sugar in your diet you have proven you are mentally capable of resisting the sugar addiction so many of us in first world face!

The article from simco via Happy makes for interesting reading, I haven’t read all of it but what I have read has got me thinking, I have said in here I had a hysterectomy five months ago and I am on another forum where women with prolapse discuss impending treatments, symptoms, postoperative recovery etc. You get the picture. One of the things that has most surprised me on that forum is the high number of women on very strong pain relief and the amount of time they are on it. I had pain relief the night of my surgery and from then on only took panadol and stopped that after about five days postop. I had always put my good recovery down to the fact I was reasonably fit and active but since reading the fasting articles I wonder if 5:2 was more influential than I thought. I was on 5:2 leading up to surgery and although I didn’t fast postoperative, I ate very little because I didn’t feel hungry and felt comfortable not eating. It makes sense to me if you were suffering a serious health issue that fasting could be beneficial. Let’s the body concentrate on healing rahter than digesting. I’ve also noticed that on the forum there are a lot of complaints about the high level of pain, none of which I had. Why? 5:2? High pain threshold anyway? Food for thought!
Although we are all IF’s I see from the posts about all the wonderful cooking that will be happening over Easter, we all still love our food? For myself, I have eaten and drunk what I want without guilt, and have noticed just how little my indulgences are these days! happy Easter all!

Hi Carolann – good to hear from you. Hope you’re continuing to feel better and brighter.

Re the pain relief post-hysterectomy: my experience was very much like yours. I had my op on a Tuesday and went home on Thursday; took paracetamol in hospital – mainly because nurses insisted, on grounds that ‘if you wait till you’re already in pain it won’t work as well, so take it now, even if you’re not’ – and felt no need for it once I got home. I too signed up to a similar forum, but came off it quite quickly because it seemed that everyone else was having a much worse time than I was, and I neither needed the support nor felt I was really able to give much.

At the time I put it down to luck, reasonable fitness and (I suspect) a fairly high pain threshold (eg I didn’t need pain relief during labours – nb that’s not a ‘competitive’ statement, just a possibly relevant fact. ) I wasn’t doing 5:2 then, and was still pretty overweight, but I do remember only wanting to eat very light food, even once I was up and walking around (ie from the evening of surgery-day, when the physics got to me!). It certainly seems instinctive to lighten the load of the body’s processes as far as possible, to allow it to concentrate on healing – yet even the 5:2 website suggests not fasting when sick, or post-surgery.

I’d be fascinated to see someone do a controlled trial of the effects of fasting on need for pain relief – but I guess it would be quite difficult to design it to take account of the other variables we’ve mentioned. Any offers from the scientists/statisticians among us, to design it? Or has it already been done (more recently than Lichtle’s book!)? No sense in reinventing the wheel!

Hi Carol,

I’m afraid it’s my bacon virtue, and nothing to do with me! Blame HTC/ Android!

I have no experience of hysterectomy, but I have been on a ward with hysterectomy patients and I understand that it is a very painful procedure. It is interesting that your experience was not so painful. I know we all have different pain thresholds, and there is no way of knowing how painful it would have been in the absence of fasting. But perhaps that doesn’t matter…?

I know that intermittent fasting has made a huge difference to my pre-menstrual/ menstrual symptoms. I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t similarly help with other conditions. As a minimum, depending on medical issue, I would not be persuaded away from 5:2 or breakfast skipping/ 16:8.

FFS and Lichtle (and Bay).

I can’t believe we (you!) are nearly at the end of your sugar/ Lent challenge. Although sugar isn’t my particular issue now (unless I eat it regularly), it has been interesting to share the journey with you. Two years ago, pre:5:2, I was a sugar addict and would have joined you. But I was lucky that 5:2 instantly disrupted my bad habits.

I hope you all enjoy (not really!) your Easter sugar treat of choice.

Having started the Easter break on a low (weight only!), I’ve put my bl**dy back out. All plans involved being mobile… Plan B appears to be involve back exercises and my kindle…

Happy, so sorry to hear you have a bad back now. Get well soon and try to get DH to spoil you a bit. 🙂

Thank you for your encouraging words re: suggar challenge. It would be nice to lose the sweet tooth like you but as Carolann said it is good to know we ARE ABLE to cut back and resist. Thanks Carol
It is good enough for me at the moment. I never thought I would lose my sweet tooth in just six weeks and will see how it goes after Easter.

Thanks Lichtle and FFS,

I had back surgery 15 years ago, and it has been pretty good since then, with only one or two ‘episodes’ and otherwise a very active lifestyle. But it does scare me when this happens, as the original episode saw 9 months off work and 6 months housebound… The prospect of that, or a life less active, fills me with dread.

As you say FFS, s*d’s law! The sun is shining, it’s warm, and no prospect of a bike ride or a run, let alone finishing preparing the veg beds 🙁

Thanks, Purple

Am off to bed having watched half of the lunar eclipse. The Milky Way and the Southern Cross are superb. A carpet of stars in a black night.

We are in outback SA staying with a fabulous cook. So far, I have turned down home made icecream and cheesecake and pudding to honour the Sugar free Lent. I doubt I will ever lose the sweet tooth, but I do hope to keep it under control.

Happy, hope you feel better soon.

Fast and Lichtle, we made it. You knew we could do the sugar free Lent 😉 it does seem amazing to have gone from 18 February until now without any sweet food.

Cheers, all. Happy Easter Sunday. 🙄 Bay

Lucky you to witness one of the great natural phenomena, Bay . You wouldn’t have seen a thing here (or at your place). Cool and overcast Easter Sunday morning here, but have had enough rain for a year in the past few days.
Hopefully our Easter egg hunt is not impeded by leeches!
Happy Easter P

Hi PVE, we now have temperatures of 15 – 16 degrees which is positively warm. The weather has been wonderful in the last few days exactly as Easter should be and we are all feeling life coming back into our bones. I managed to spring clean, re-arrange and clear out a couple of rooms and the garden is getting a look in as well now with car runs to the rubbish tip and so on.

This sugar bunny had a complete sugar blow-out; I had as much chocolate and sugar as I wanted (just short of actually bathing in the stuff) no guilty conscience or anything. Blooming Marvellous.

Today, I weighed 600g more than last week exactly the same as I weighed pre lent challenge. ;-). But today I am semi-fasting, having just had a couple of apples and a handful of nuts so far and it is midday now. I now intend to stay sugar free until Sunday (or at least Saturday) and see if I can keep up the pattern in the long run. Some things were too sweet (small progress) but my favourite hazlenut chocolate wasn’t and I could still eat that to bursting. I am hoping that as time goes on, things will change slowly.

Have your family left or are you still enjoying grand children? Your grand children might have been a reason why you didn’t gain as well, don’t you think?

Good night and take care.

Well, I had no chocolate at all on Sunday – though I did eat an awful lot of other stuff from Saturday evening onwards – .lots of socialising, lots of puds – and arrived home on Sunday night with lots of chocolate! Hid a lot in the back of the freezer, where it will be really difficult to get at it; o’ded grossly on some of the rest yesterday and today and now couldn’t face another sweet thing to save my life. And some of the stuff I used to really enjoy now tastes revoltingly sweet, which I guess is a result. Back on the ‘Sunday only’ wagon tomorrow! I have put on 1lb since Saturday, and I feel heavy and chunky (even though still in middle of m/range so hardly overweight) so tomorrow and Saturday will definitely be fast days. Isn’t it good to know we can undo the damage done? But I’d still like to reach the point where I’m not tempted to do it in the first place!
Lichtle – we have proved we can manage ‘Sunday’s only’: I shall definitely join you in sticking to it from now on.
CarolAnn – you’ve raised a really important point: educating ourselves as to what is ‘normal’ eating. We’ve been visiting our grandson and his wife in their new home today; stopped for lunch (which I don’t normally eat these days) somewhere which serves really good, healthy, delicious food – but all the portions looked off-puttingly enormous. In the end I was delighted to find a ‘kids’ buffet’, with teeny finger sandwiches, fruit, minute packets of cheese and pots of grapes etc, so I pretended to be 5, and enjoyed that. I really didn’t feel deprived in any way.
Purple – we are finally feeling some warmth, as you lose it. Odd to think that 2 days ago I was wearing a duffel coat, scarf and gloves: today I’ve been gardening in a T shirt. Long may it last – and the best to you as winter sets in. .

Has anyone else realised that Hotel Chocolat now do a 100% chocolate, with zero sugar? I tasted some of the chocolate drops this afternoon; they would definitely be an acquired taste, even for me (I normally eat 90%) – but at £3.75 per 35gm, it’s probably better not acquired! But it could be a useful emergency-only fix…

Hi Purple

No, I didn’t OD on chocolate. 😉 On Sunday I had one cornflake sultana home made cookie and a very small amount of homemade icecream.

Mostly, I haven’t had any sweets until last night, Tuesday, when I had some 70% dark chocolate that was delicious. 🙄

Today, I am fasting. I am quite slim, loose trousers, and don’t feel that I have put on any weight over Easter.

Hi Happy, Lichtle and FFS, I enjoyed being sugar free through Lent so much that it feels like it will be simple to continue. In a continuation of the 5:2 practice, I already ask myself when faced by a sweet item. Is it worth eating this? Is it going to be enjoyable enough to be my only sweet for the week? Or shall I wait and see if something better comes up during the week? 😉

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Morning L, C and ffs 🙂
14deg here this morning. It will warm to 22 during the day. It is really interesting how the weather seems to do a sudden shift in both hemispheres as if the Earth’s orbit does a quick kick sideways at this time. It is fun putting on warm jumpers at night, but sitting in the sun, streaming in, during the day.

Fascinating varied reactions to the sugar. I too ate no chocolate eggs on Sunday and only one on Saturday night. Unfortunately I have been given a fair bit. I’m not sure what to do with it. We don’t need chocolate, I can’t justify giving it to anyone I know.

Yes Lichtle. The family went home and peace has returned 🙂 Thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. I find I eat very little when I have guests as I spend so much time preparing and cleaning up, I feel I’ve eaten. I tend to get my calories in liquid form 😉

Didn’t feel like a fast yesterday. Just ate low cal, no wine and am 55.9 this morning!!! Just as well I didn’t fast! I really think I have this eating thing cracked. Carol, we now eat at random times. Not snacking, but skipping or delaying meals if we are not hungry or are busy. In the past, we always stopped for a meal. Knowing how long we can go without food has a huge spinoff for normal days.

Cheers P 🙂

Hi Purple

No rash. Just itchy skin. It used to drive me bonkers. I couldn’t track the cause. Just random, extreme itchy skin on my legs, buttocks and trunk. I believe it has to do with what I eat. The worst time was after a lovely Indian meal. On that occasion, I mixed up a solution of bicarbonate soda and water and pasted my skin. That worked as it took the heat away. 🙄

Last night was a mild dose of itchy skin by comparison. I shall keep the sugar intake as a theory for now, and observe.

Not yet into the cool weather. I am in Brisbane for another two weeks, enjoying the minimum 18 C last night. Probably be 26C today with blue skies. 😉 Family get together over next few days.

On Monday we were near Burra in South Australia, out of doors, as the temps plummeted from 23C sunny on Sunday to an 11C icy winds kind of Monday. Brrrrrrr!

Cheers, Bay 🙂

Bay – we crossed again – frustrating! I’m reassured to hear that you’re used to coping with the itchy skin, rather than its being new. This is just a guess, and I’m not a medic, but I know I’ve read that itchy skin on the grunk can be (nb not necessarily is) connected with the liver working overtime to metabolise something which it finds stressful – so perhaps your instinct that it’s sugar-related is sound. It might be worth a controlled trial – or at least a spell of observation. Whatever it is, hope it gets better soon.

Oh no FFS! That suggests it may be the alcohol and/or the sugar in my weekend tipple. Very soon I won’t have any vices left at all!

Don’t go there, Happy! I’d blame the carbs in the weekend 😉 P

Duvet, DUVET, not duet – stupid iPad!