I’ve read so much on this diet and today I’m on my 1st fast day, today ive eaten fruit and chicken and veg with gravy, Tomorow is my non fast day and I’m worried of overeating and I’m not sure what I’m actually allowed to eat. Can anybody help me?
This topic contains 14 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by Pot-bellied Heron 9 years ago.
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Hi Lilmiss and welcome:
5:2 is a calorie based diet, not a food type based diet. That means you can eat anything you want on both diet and non diet days as long as you follow the calorie guidelines of 500 or less on diet days and your TDEE or less on non diet days.
This thread will answer most of your questions about the 5:2 diet: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/the-basics-for-newbies-your-questions-answered/
Good Luck!
Hi Lilmiss,
You want to eat normally on your non fast days, but sometimes it is hard to know what that means.
Here is some great information that you may find useful: https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au
It is the site for the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
Other countries probably have something similar.
I’ve done a fair amount of my own research about normal healthy eating, so I might be able to answer further questions you have.
Cheers
Hi Cinque:
‘Normal’ eating is different from ‘recommended’ eating. The authors of the book used the word normal in relation to their personal eating habits. They apparently did not realize that overweight people’s normal eating habits had them overeating, and if an over eater came to 5:2 and continued to eat normally on their non diet days they might not lose weight, and may even continue gaining weight, if somewhat more slowly than they had been. That is why almost everyone with experience with the diet has abandoned the concept of ‘normal’ eating and adopted the concept of TDEE.
Recommended eating is just that, and can differ around the world with different food supplies and cultures. Recommendations are only beneficial if they are ‘right’. The government has been extremely wrong over the years in their dietary recommendations. Their main one has been the recommendation to eat a low fat, high carb diet. We now know (and some knew when the low fat diet was initially dictated) that the low fat diet is dangerous and has led to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
I briefly reviewed the guidelines you posted and would recommend against following many of them. To point out just two, they recommend not eating saturated fat. We now know that natural saturated fat in the diet is very beneficial. They also recommend eating Omega 6 fats (vegetable oils like corn oil). Science knows the Omega 6 oils are unhealthy, and that if heated – as in used to fry foods – are dangerous. Here is a comment on the latest study:
“Cooking with vegetable oils releases toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases, according to leading scientists, who are now recommending food be fried in olive oil, coconut oil, butter or even lard.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11981884/Cooking-with-vegetable-oils-releases-toxic-cancer-causing-chemicals-say-experts.html. The article also gives an (incomplete) outline of current research on fats.
The best advice to an overweight person in any land is to eat a low calorie high fat, moderate protein and low carb diet, and try to make sure the fats, proteins and carbs are natural, not processed. It is also OK to eat a very high carb diet if all of the carbs consumed are natural and not processed, but it is hard to structure such a diet and still get the natural necessary nutrients provided in natural animal fats and proteins. And lest you think a low calorie high fat diet is ridiculous, research shows a person eating a daily diet of 20g or less of carbs a day (80 calories) with the remainder being mostly fat, and being able to eat all of the fat/protein they want each day, averages eating about 1500 cal. per day. Which is why people lose weight on the Atkins and HFLC diets.
But, 5:2 will work with any diet, regardless of food type. That is part of its genius!
Hi Sim
was reading that research and left totally confused – I have used just olive oil for many years for both cooking and for dressings. And I have never eaten low fat anything.
But, as with everything to do with food, there are many arguments – the argument to look for oils with a balance of omega 3 and omega 6, as too as iols high in omega 6 without the balance of omega 3 causes harm.
And the low smoking point of some oils – including olive oil – means, in some studies, it is not suitable for frying, putting olive oil right into the category of oils to be avoided.
Personally I have never used olive oil for deep frying, because I haven’t deep fried anything for about 30 years, but – as ever – confusion reigns.
Perhaps we should just eat everything raw – or better yet cook everything in alcohol???
Hi milena:
There is no need to worry about balancing 3s and 6s – just avoid 6s and you will be fine. There are a few of them in real food so you don’t need to put them in your diet.
Most frying can be done with olive oil, coconut oil or butter – you need not avoid any of them. It is only when you are using very high heat that you would go to lard or suet. Restaurant chains that sell French fries and other deep fat fried foods used to use beef suet for deep frying but were forced to change to vegetable oils by the anti saturated fat authorities. We now know they were just making us more unhealthy. It wasn’t the suet that was unhealthy, it was the vegetable oil!
Hi Pot-bellied:
Check this – it can be boring because of the constant citation of clinical studies, but you might start understanding what the research is – and it has progressed since the time this lecture was given: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZ4UqtbB_g
Good Luck!
Hi Pot-bellied:
Operator error posted wrong link above (although it is interesting). This is the right one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QetsIU-3k7Y
Sorry.
I will certainly watch the video, if not tonight, this weekend. Before I do I’d just like to state that my objection is to the word “know” and I’m not sure a man, who for some reason wears a stethoscope to make a video, is going to convince me, against the majority of medical opinion, that the consumption of saturated fat is beneficial.
But we shall see.
Hi Pot-bellied:
I applaud you for being open minded. Most people that have grown up being told fat is bad, especially saturated fat, by their doctor or something they read on the internet or their hairdresser, upon hearing it might not be all that bad either ignore the information, or argue that whomever made the comment is crazy. They rarely check it out for themselves.
The majority of medical opinion for the last 40+ years has been eat a low fat diet. That majority of medical opinion is now backtracking as fast as they politically can, with one of their leaders in the U.S., Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston, now saying:
“Certainly no one is currently recommending low fat diets for anyone . . .”
If you are really interested, here is another speech given by the former head of a major heart institute in the U.S. and now a Professor of Medicine at a large medical school entitled ‘Enjoy Eating Saturated Fats: They’re Good for You’. This speech was given about 2 years before Dr. Fung’s speech, so does not have all of the study data Dr. Fung has. The information is accurate and current for the time, and gives a nice history of how saturated fat became demonized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY.
I’m always willing to be educated. I’m halfway through the Fung video and he hasn’t really got any further than saying saturated fats aren’t too bad for us, which is very different from being beneficial. But I’ll watch the rest today.
If this is the paradigm shift you believe it to be then the font of all knowledge that is the internet seems to be keeping very quiet about it.
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