Nearly 2 years ago I posted this:
I was skeptical, but a work colleague is swearing by it and I am finally giving it a go. Anybody got any further updates? I tried some other methods (detailed in Chubby Checkers) last year and probably in the end only managed a pound or 2 off. My blood pressure was deemed to be very high in a recent routine check so it is time to stop messing around.
Pinging those who had tried it or were doing something else.
@Fin59 @Twang @Bingo-Little @IanP @ratbiter @Fenderman @Steerpike @millymollymandy @Getthenet
I haven’t done the 5:2 diet but I have given up eating breakfast and eat two meals every day in an 8 hour window between 12-8pm. There was a Prof of Clinical Biochemistry on 5Live breakfast show last week supporting this view, contradicted by a Dietician.
This is combined with a 30 minute walk most work days and has lead tome losing 1.5 stone in 4 months since starting my new job.
Each to their own I accept but there is no way I could limit my calorie intake each day to less than 1500. I would not be safe to drive home from work due to the subsequent light headed feeling I would get.
I have made a decision that from next week I want to have alternate weeks without any bread and see if that works. Lunch will consist of soups and the odd jacket potato. I eat too much bread so need to try it to see if it works.
It does. I’ve cut right down, but last year cut it right out for a few weeks and dropped a few pounds as well as losing that bloaty feeling.
I tried the 5:2 a few years back. Definitely helped shift weight for me. Then I started running and now I exercise more, but it doesn’t have the same effect. Always a few headaches for me – sugar withdrawal symptoms!
Well, 5:2 worked and continues to work for us. The 2 days each week of 500 calories were tough but manageable (top tip – go to bed at 9pm latest) and then to be allowed to eat & drink more or less what you want for the other 5 days is remarkably wonderful.
I hit my two stone target in around 4 months (coupled with upping my exercise regime) and since then do 6:1. Most of the time my weight remains steady but if I over-indulge myself (like a trip back to the UK which might just include fish & chips, Indian takeaways and the odd gallon of Adnams) I go back to 5:2 for a couple of weeks and all is well again.
There are a lot of seriously deranged (and dangerous) food faddists out there (like the awful https://deliciouslyella.com/) but we use this book a lot: the recipes are mostly delicious (mostly vegetarian) and several have even become permanent features of our “feast” days.
I honestly cannot recommend this highly enough https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elly-Pears-Fast-Days-Feast-ebook/dp/B0169DPYLG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1484083345&sr=1-2&keywords=elly+pear
ps what helped me a lot through those first months was the Chubby Checkers Blog on here – thanks once again, Drakey my girl!!
Thanks, that’s useful.
I tried the 5:2. Mondays and Wednesdays… but I started to hate those days and would pig out in the normal way on the other days. In the end I decided to make a lifestyle change as much as possible.
So now I eat on all days but rarely eat any wheat products (bread and pasta), anything with “added sugar” (sweets, biscuits, chocolate, sweet yoghurts, processed foods) and limit my beer drinking to parties and very hot days (37 degrees in Sydney today – tick). I also go to the gym regularly and am fairly active.
It has done it for me. I have a “dad bod” – not trim but not too flabby with noticeable definition in important places. I’m not ashamed to take off my shirt in public. Much more importantly my blood pressure is excellent, my resting pulse is low and after years of high cholesterol my readings are normal. I’m about 10 kgs lighter but I dont weigh myself often.
But the best advice I can give to lose weight is write down the calorie content of everything you eat for 3 months. Like budgeting it can be a very sobering and enlightening experience. You can get an app to help natch.
I kind of tried what you did last year, but would crave certain things too much and eventually binge. If I know on a low calorie day that I can have what I crave tomorrow (within reason), I think I may find that easier.
The app My Fitness Pal is good at calculating the calories for everything you eat.
Mrs M and I tried it last year, on her urging. It worked for me but not for her, mainly because I work from home and lead a fairly solitary life whereas she is much more social and would often have to postpone or shift the days, because it was hard to go out for a drink and not drink, or out for dinner and eat fuck all. It’s best if you’re both doing it at the same time. Best thing about it for me was no alcohol, which I’m still trying (without much success at this time of year) to go without 2 days a week.
People commented that I looked well, which they don’t normally do (even though I am pretty well!)
I have cut my alcohol intake way down, but probably replaced it with something else.
I thought seriously about doing the 5:2, but I honestly don’t think I’d be able to physically get through the day with just 500 calories.
I decided on Xmas Eve to quit drinking alcohol (except the odd night out). I was drinking far too much! I realised I actually eat healthy, and I walk 4 miles a day Mon-Fri – so the only thing I could tackle was the thing I love the most – the drink.
I worked out I was drinking;
Friday – 6 pints
Saturday – 4 pints – 2 glasses of wine
Sunday – a bottle of wine
One night through the week – 4 pints.
I make that over 3000 calories I’m now minus – plus I’m eating extra healthy, so I’m hoping to lose a stone and half, without anything too drastic except the alcohol reduction. Hoping that works – we shall see!
5:2 is only another way of restricting calories, there’s nowt magic about it. You’ve got to do what works for you.
I have a big proteiny breakfast which keeps me full til a very light lunch then a 8-900 calorie dinner. I cycle an hour/1:10 a day so that results in a nice calorie deficit, which is all that counts. If you ate 1600 calories of Chomps and Wham bars and nothing else you’d lose weight. You’d be malnourished and probably have scurvy but you would lose weight.
Dead right to cut out the sauce, it adds up astonishingly, and all the more when you consider that most people under record their drinking / glass size. A bottle of wine is supposed to contain about 6 glasses. Most home drinkers would get 4 out of one and still count each as one glass.
The Chomp Wham diet – I can see a new phenomenon about to start…
Haha I’ll make a million. I think when dieting it’s worth taking vitamin supplements as you sometimes end up lacking some useful stuff like vit c. I swear by berocca and if they want to treat this as an endorsement the cheque can be sent to the usual address.
Ahem – may be its just us but most of the wine we drink seems to be marked at nine or more units a bottle.
I suspect that 6 units per bottle is for 11% by volume stuff – or less than that?
Long ago and far away Mrs never and myself met her father and an affable chum of his in a very pleasant pub for a few Sunday lunchtime drinks. Somehow we managed three rounds.
The gentlemen (I use the term loosely) had three pints each while Mrs never had three large glasses of Australian Shiraz. In said establishment a large glass of wine was 250ml so Mrs never got through a whole bottle, probably ten units, before her Sunday lunch.
The afternoon could easily have gone a lot worse than it did.
Ah but a glass doesn’t equate to a unit. More like 1.8 for a “standard” glass.
https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/alcohol-facts/alcoholic-drinks-units/what-is-an-alcohol-unit/#spirit
I stuck to the 5:2 way of eating for two and half years because it worked for me, by helping keep weekly calories in check (I’m the kind of person who rarely binges but could graze forever). It also kept my size more or less the same without any dieting.
However, I dropped the 5:2 in December, due to work, life, other long-standing minor health issues leaving me feeling just knackered – and I now can’t get into many of my clothes!
To my surprise, a course of antibiotics seems to be really helping the health issues (I was sceptical, it may be a placebo effect, but I’ll take it anyway!) At this rate, I should have enough energy and motivation back by next week to be back on my 500 calorie days again (and hopefully, the “big trousers” can soon be banished to the back of the wardrobe again).
And where is our glorious leader @Drakeygirl ? Hope all well.
I didn’t do the 5:2 as I was fairly sure i wouldn’t stick to it. But I changed my diet a fair bit by cutting down dramatically on pasta and bread – maybe once a week each now, if that. Cut out sweeties and buns at work, used MyFitnessPal dedicatedly and lost over a stone and a half – 14.2 down to 12.8. 6 months in a hotel for work added half a stone back so I’m now 13 but sticking to the same regime. Now the hotel thing is over I hope to drop below 13 again which would be great.
Another vote for My Fitness Pal. I tried the 5:2 diet for a while but the 2 bit was so miserable that I switched to MFP. I must admit that I was sceptical at first but if you’re reasonably accurate with your calorie counting – and MFP does make it quite easy – the weight will come off, and fairly quickly as well to give you that much needed momentum and self-congratulatory glow. I went from about 13.5 stone to 11 stone in about 5 or 6 months, although the last half stone of that was probably aided by a severe chest infection (not a recommended method of dieting).
I tried 5:2 for a while and it was moderately helpful, but as time when on the fasting days got harder to tolerate, and it didn’t always fit with work and so on. The weight loss was slow, and it became too easy to negate all the gains on the non fasting days.
I dropped a lot of weight around 18 months ago doing Atkins; cutting out carbs and more importantly sugar. It worked well for me because I like red meat / cheese / protein based meals. I did if for about 5 months and dropped about a stone. I caved in just before last Xmas and in the year since I slowly put it back on because it was too easy to go back to old habits – too many snacks between meals (boredom), portions that are too big, and not much exercise as an offset. There also comes a point where another fry up for breakfast, another huge steak for dinner just isn’t what you want.
So, I’m now trying to eat a low carb diet, reign in the portions, and reduce the plonk / beer (no booze so far in 2017 but a business trip next week will put a crimp in that – I’ll add the days back on at the end of the month, not that anyone but me is counting). I’ve had enough periods of weight loss and gain to see that any new eating regime that can’t be made into something that is long term, sustainable and “normal” will break at some point. Making it stick is a bastard. In my case, a fat one.
Thanks for your view, I have done this sort of stuff before too and it didn’t work so I will give the 5:2 a go, although the fast days do seem completely miserable.
I’m taking Jan off too, so why do you need to drink on a business trip? Surely it will help to be sober/not hungover? And adding days on is a bit of a cheat, the whole idea is a consecutive month off!
Hey, @dai. I’m fine, thanks, just offline a bit at the moment trying to keep on top of Real Life Stuff. Feeling fit and healthy though, thanks to up the patented Chubby Checker mantra: eat better, drink less, move more.
Good to hear
Again, it’s about whatever works for you but Atkins is just calorie control dressed up. It’s remarkably hard to eat 2500 calories of nothing but protein and fat without feeling bloody horrible and IMO that’s what no/low carb diets rely on. There’s also some concerns about what that unbalanced a diet does to your kidneys and liver. I’m not trying to put you off, but more saying don’t worry too much if you eat a bread bun once in a while as long as you’re eating fewer than usual calories.
The thing about carbs is they’re dead easy to eat (and drink). So when people go high-protein what they’re mostly doing is stopping snacking because almost all snacks are carby. It also means no booze which is a huge stealth source of calories. Badda bing: weight loss.
I’ve tried all sorts over the years. I put on loads of weight during years of interim contracts with lots of boring driving. Couldn’t get 5:2 to work and certainly couldn’t see it as a long term lifestyle choice. I lost a lot on Dukan but it all came back when I ran out of steam. I was looking for something that wasn’t a diet at such, something with which I could lose weight and which would educate my mind and body sufficiently to work afterwards. I’m still in the losing phase so can’t guarantee the second part yet, but it feels good and I’m more confident than I’ve been before that I’ve found an answer. I’ve lost 2.5 stones since May and I’m working on losing a further 2 stones at the moment. Even Christmas hasn’t put me back much because I now know how to make good choices in almost every situation. I’m not a zealot regarding this and will sometimes have a blowout but they are always planned and I’m finding it easy getting back to basics straight after. I’ve not been hungry once since I started and very rarely feel that I’m missing out on anything. The process is Slimming World which in its new form concentrates on food optimising and not fadding dieting. I’ve learned a lot. I could never see myself attending a group but I do. Privately I refer to it as fat club but I would be the first to admit that I’ve learned a lot of ways to prepare healthy foods from my fellow SW’ers. It isn’t magic, it isn’t faddy and, yes, there is a massive organisation making money in the background but I’m losing weight, eating great food, feeling tremendous, buying nicer clothes and, most importantly, I’m adding years to my very enjoyable life. If somebody wants to make money out of helping me to do all of those things then I don’t mind at all. I’m sure it isn’t for everybody but I have got into the habit of explaining it to people and a number of my workmates are now taking their first steps. Must go, another enormous healthy dinner is calling me.
My wife did Slimming World very successfully and mostly enjoyed the food. Some of it required a bit of forethought and some of it wasn’t nice at all but overall it was very doable.
I’ve found that one of the big incentives for keeping my weight under control has been determination not to buy yet another set of new clothes. I went down a couple of trouser sizes when I lost 2.5 stone last year and threw out all the bigger sized trousers when I bought a new set of slimmer ones. So I’m determined not to get too big again and have to revert to the old size, bad for my finances and morale.