Hi fbeaachfl and welcome:

Eating reduced calories every day is not bad. The body’s metabolism does not slow down with reduced calorie eating (or speed up if you eat a lot of calories).

The ‘starvation mode’ is a myth – it does not exist. See the FAQ at the top of this page, or this post by Dr. M.: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/food-thought-fast-day-starvation-mode/

The basic rule is the less you eat, the more you lose. The way to lose the most weight the quickest is to eat nothing at all (not recommended), but if you think about it, it shoots down the ‘starvation mode’ theory. If there was a starvation mode, you would not lose weight if you did not eat!

Good Luck!

Hi shezzo:

I responded to your other post. There are many reasons that explain your situation, all covered somewhere in this thread.

However, if you read number two, you will get an idea.

Just keep on going!

Good Luck!

Hi:

Your weight can vary two or more pounds on a daily basis. You probably weighed on an up day. Just think how happy you would have been had you weighed on a down day. But your ‘real’ weight would be the same either way. That is why many keep track of their trend, not their actual weights. Weights simply do not go up or down on a consistent basis regardless of the ‘numbers’.

Good Luck!

Hi Fox and welcome:

People react differently to diet days. For some, no problem. For some, dizzy, can’t think.

I guess you should try a couple of non-work days (after a diet day) to see how you react.

If you can’t do that, try eating a high fat/protein breakfast with maybe a high fat/protein snack during the day to see if that works for you.

Good Luck!

Hi:

My thoughts on the HFLC (High Fat Low Carb) diet:

Thought I would add some information and food for thought.

First, the HFLC diet has been around for a long time. It was first popularized as the Atkins Diet in 1972, but was around well before then.

Although I have no idea where Dr. Fung’s program ‘came from’, it is basically a combination of the original Atkins Diet and a fasting protocol used by Dr. Goldhamer for over 30 years. Dr. Goldhamer has reported for years that he has reversed type 2 diabetes via longer term fasting, combined with a plant based diet, just as Dr. Atkins reported he had reversed the type 2 diabetes of over 5000 patients using his Atkins Diet. Dr. Fung realized that by starting with a longer term fast, and using intermittent fasting in conjunction with the HFLC diet, he could speed up the reversal of the diabetes. I am glad he is continuing the educational process and letting people know they are not doomed to suffer from diabetes until they die.

As for ‘calories in, calories out’ – well, it is still true. Dr. Fung even writes in his blog that calories in, calories out is ‘technically’ true (can there be any other ‘truth’ when it comes to science?).

The thought that it is not true seems to come from the fact that on the HFLC diet you can eat what you want, not count calories and still lose weight. People seem to think that there is something ‘special’ about the diet that contradicts the calories in/out theory.

However, what most people have never done, because they don’t have to, is count calories when on the HFLC diet. Research was done on the induction phase of the Atkins diet (20 g. of carbs or less per day, all of the fat/protein foods you want to eat), and when they counted the calories eaten, instead of the carbs, they found that people were eating 1500 or fewer calories per day (of course, it varied by person). You hear it all the time by people on the diet – they get full and don’t get hungry again quickly, so they don’t eat. That is why people on the HFLC diet lose weight – they are on a continuous low calorie diet.

That leads into the ‘set point theory’. Note the word ‘theory’ – it has never been proven. However, there is some scientific basis for the concept that the body can regulate its food intake – if it is eating certain foods.

Humans developed eating fat and protein – lots of fat, some protein. The amount of carbs they ate in the form of fruits, berries and nuts, was very small. As a result, the body developed ‘sensors’ that monitored the body’s intake of fat and protein (not carbs) and those sensors told the brain when fat and protein were coming in. The brain took note, and if it felt the body needed more, signaled that fact by making the body ‘hungry’. But, if it felt the body had enough food, it said ‘I’m full’, and eating stopped. These sensors are still in place and operative, so when someone goes on the HFLC diet, they eat until they are full and stop. If they are overweight, this usually means they stop eating at a caloric intake level lower than their TDEE – and they lose weight.

The low fat high carb diet was insidious because it ‘bypassed’ the body’s sensors. There being no sensors that picked up carb intake, the body can eat carb after carb and the brain will not know about it. So it keeps saying ‘I’m hungry, get more food’, and the body will continue to eat. This becomes even worse than just getting fat as a result because of the way the body processes carbs – and now we get into blood sugar spikes, high insulin production to counter the spikes and all that comes with that process.

So now I see people returning to the Atkins diet, this time not as rebels but as followers of main stream thought. It has several things going against it as a long term diet – two are critical. First, it is expensive to follow. Fat and protein cost considerably more over time than do carbs, so it is not a ‘cheap’ diet. Second, people trying to begin and stay on the diet after decades of being told to eat carbs have to deal with carb addiction. As people on the HFLC diet slip a couple of carbs into their diet (treats) the addiction kicks in and more and more ‘treats’ seem to make their way into the diet, until the person is back eating like they used to eat. People post this chain of events on this site all of the time. It is hard fighting an addiction.

That is where fasting comes in. Fasting is proven to work with any type of diet. In addition to the two days of severely reduced eating (which lowers all intake), by focusing on calories the remaining non diet days carb intake is also restricted despite the ‘lack of sensors’ to indicate when to stop eating. Research shows that not only leads to weight loss, but improved blood work. If longer term fasts are begun, then, perhaps, other benefits may be realized.

Just food for thought.

Hi:

I am seeing more and more posts highlighting the benefits of olive oil in connection with weight loss. Generally, the information I’ve seen posted so far is correct – as far as it goes. I think you should know, however, you will get similar results from eating larger amounts of suet (beef fat), lard (pig fat), coconut oil and nut and dairy fats, also.

Research has shown that the ideal diet for the human body is one that gets 60-70% calories from fat, 20-30% from protein and 5-20% from carbs (not processed like sugar or flour, but from veggies). By eating more olive oil, you are increasing the amount of fat in your diet which, believe it or not, is helpful for losing weight. The reason for this has been posted many times in many places on this and other sites. Think of the constant advice to eat high fat/protein foods on your diet days so you will not be so hungry. A good outline of why it works is in this Dr. Fung video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QetsIU-3k7Y

The low fat diet has been discredited, even to the extent that the US government in its upcoming dietary guidelines no longer tries to limit the fat intake by its citizens – . http://www.webmd.com/diet/20150626/fat-no-longer-the-focus-of-new-us-dietary-guidelines?src=RSS_PUBLIC. The government has also acknowledged that there is no negative correlation between dietary saturated fat intake and bad cholesterol/triglyceride levels in the blood. It turns out that the government has been giving bad dietary advice for decades and that the original, much maligned, Atkins diet is the most healthy diet around. Current variations of the original Atkins diet that you may have heard of include the HFLC diet (high fat, low carb), Paleo and god knows how many others.

However, now that fats are OK to eat, we get to the issue of which fats. And, as usual, it isn’t that easy. In a nutshell, eating natural fats is fine, but eating processed fats is not (sound familiar from the carb world?).

Natural fats are suet, lard, olive oil, coconut oil, oil in nuts and dairy and the like. Processed fats are transfats (now being banned from the food supply in the US) and vegetable oils like corn, soybean and other vegetable oils (how many oily veggies are you familiar with and how do they get oil from corn or soybeans?). Here is a report of recent research on the effects of vegetable oils on weight gain, compared to coconut oil and sugar (hint, veggie oil puts on more weight than sugar and much more weight than eating coconut oil – just think of a donut made from sugar and wheat and fried in veggi oil!): http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/08/03/common-oil-that-science-now-shows-is-worse-than-sugar/?intcmp=hpff

This information has been out there for years, but is just now hitting the mainstream press and governmental guidelines. In my opinion, it is a good thing to understand the effects on your body of food being eaten. It turns out that eating more natural fats helps with weight loss and, after losing weight, helps with weight maintenance.

The science is clear, now it will just take a long time for people to realize what they need to do to lose weight and be much more healthy! In the meantime, 5:2 goes a long way toward educating a person on what foods work for the person, and helping with necessary weight loss even if the person’s diet is not ‘ideal’.

Good Luck!

Hi Nana:

I explain TDEE here: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/tdee-for-the-curious-or-why-dont-i-lose-weight-faster/

It gives you all you need to know.

Good Luck!

Hi Opal and welcome:

Your confusion comes because you are not doing 5:2, you are doing something else.

A day goes from midnight to midnight – it is not a 24 hour period sometime else. As this thread explains in the original post, 5:2 works like this – you go to bed, get up, eat 500 or fewer calories during your waking hours, go to bed, get up and eat to your TDEE or less during your waking hours the following day. Your ‘diet’ period is about 36 hours, not 24.

If you want to do 24 hour periods, you are simply on an every day reduced calorie diet and you need to count your calories daily. The number you come in below your TDEE for the week will determine how much you lose each week. As you have discovered, if you eat to your TDEE before you start at 2 pm, and eat to your TDEE 24 hours later after you stop at 2 pm, you will have not taken any calories out of your diet on either day and will not lose any weight, or will lose less than if you were doing 5:2 if you end up eating less than your TDEE on either of the two days.

The post that started this thread (Warnings) and the ‘Calorie Restriction’ thread: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/52-calorie-restriction-v-fasting-for-newbies/, explain more.

Good Luck!

Hi Opal:

The book apparently gives alternatives for people unable or unwilling to do 5:2. My observation is that those alternatives cause confusion and were not helpful to many people.

5:2 is quite simple, but not necessairly easy. But if you focus on doing your diet days correctly for a few weeks, usually everything else falls into place.

Good Luck!