Body hacks: The Fast Diet, aka The 5:2 diet

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#985055 12-Feb-2014 13:45

After several years on corticosteroids and being wheelchair bound I had put on weight. When the Govt approved the new drug treatment I am now on I have been able to out and about more without the chair and I am also no longer on
steroids.

I decided I needed to give my body all the opportunity and assistance to remove strain from it so I decided to lose weight. After talking a length with my son, a medical professional I decided diets are just not working and will never work in the long term
so I decided on a life style change. I now eat cereal only for breakfast, I have soup for lunch ( I love soup so no hardship) and a small dinner. I do not eat any rubbish food or in general eat between meals. If I needed to eat between meals to take medication
or just hungry I eat fruit or low fat rye biscuits or alike. I drink at least 1.5 litters of water and quite often when feeling hungry I will drink water and this works. I drink no alcohol, and if I want fizzy drinks I drink diet whatever.

With this regime I have lost over 25KG and have maintained that weight for over 12 months.

ajobbins

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#985064 12-Feb-2014 13:54

tdgeek: Has he also modified the non fast days? I bet he has to some degree which also reduces calorie intake over a week.

I feel that sustainability is the key,if the diet isn't harsh, you can grow into it, pun intended, so it can become a lowish effort lifestyle change over time

He has, but not purposely. He used to snack constantly, but has found the fasting days have kind of retrained him not to snack generally - so he eats more proper meals now naturally.

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#985070 12-Feb-2014 13:56

KiwiNZ: After several years on corticosteroids and being wheelchair bound I had put on weight. When the Govt approved the new drug treatment I am now on I have been able to out and about more without the chair and I am also no longer on
steroids.

I decided I needed to give my body all the opportunity and assistance to remove strain from it so I decided to lose weight. After talking a length with my son, a medical professional I decided diets are just not working and will never work in the long term
so I decided on a life style change. I now eat cereal only for breakfast, I have soup for lunch ( I love soup so no hardship) and a small dinner. I do not eat any rubbish food or in general eat between meals. If I needed to eat between meals to take medication
or just hungry I eat fruit or low fat rye biscuits or alike. I drink at least 1.5 litters of water and quite often when feeling hungry I will drink water and this works. I drink no alcohol, and if I want fizzy drinks I drink diet whatever.

With this regime I have lost over 25KG and have maintained that weight for over 12 months.

That is awesome. I know everyone on here, albeit by username only and the odd pic. Great to hear KiwiNZ.

The word diet infers a lot, particularly giving up, sacrificing, etc.Long term, a "diet" needs to transform to a voluntary, non struggle lifestyle change. Perhaps many feel that the word diet really means rabbit food, but it's subtle, controlled lifestyle changes as you have shown. And as I've mentioned , Timmays post I find really interesting and that aside from its 2 day fast, it will promote education for the other 5

jonathan18

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#985073 12-Feb-2014 13:59

I've been doing the 5:2 diet for over six months now and, through that and increasing exercise, have lost over 13kg. My comments, in reply to earlier posts:

This CAN be a sustainable and long-term life-style change, as opposed to a fad. I've tried other diets before and never lasted in the end - takes too much will power and I love food too much! This gives the ability to have one's cake and eat it too.

It's quite clear in the book that the two days can be reduced to one once you reach your goal weight. This reduces the affect on one's life by half! While I don't hate the diet days, I'm looking forward to getting to this point.

What I think one of the weakest problems of the diet is the lack of guidence as to what to eat, not just how much. It needs to be combined with other knowledge/awareness of good eating.

That said, if you do it properly, it totally enhances your eating patterns for the rest of the week through, at a minimum, making you aware of the impact of your eating decisions. It really does improve one's knowldge of food - for example, finding out how many calories in rice (which I don't touch on diet days) has resulted in us eating less and also far less often.

Agree re impact of alcohol - this was evident in the holidays where clearly I was drinking more than usual! Empty calories and all that.

Results can vary greatly - a family member I've been doing it with hasn't had nearly the same results, despite being nearly as careful as me.

Each person seems to need to work out a pattern of meals on diet days that work for them. Personally, I like having a small breakfast (at the moment this is 250g of berries) and a decent dinner.

I think it works out really easily for vegetarians such as myself; especially if willing/able to eat eggs (good protein/relatively low calories). Tofu is good, as is dhal. It also means we tend to construct more simple "whole-food" meals, with the benefit of avoiding processed stuff.

Cheers
Jonathan

tdgeek

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#985088 12-Feb-2014 14:05

Does all food have to have calories labelled?

crackrdbycracku

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#985093 12-Feb-2014 14:08

jonathan18:

What I think one of the weakest problems of the diet is the lack of guidence as to what to eat, not just how much. It needs to be combined with other knowledge/awareness of good eating.

There is a surprising amount of stuff online now about what you can eat on fasting days. Personally, I read labels which I didn't before and got a bit of a shock. I also spend a lot of time Googling 'How many calories in ...'

As I have said before, for me it was about changing my relationship with food. I already knew that broccoli was a better option than sausage rolls.

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geekiegeek

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#985105 12-Feb-2014 14:18

What to eat is easy. Keep to the outside edge of the supermarket, i.e. fresh produce and meat. the isles are full of highly processed foods that are high in salt, sugar and gods knows what else.

If it didn't grow in the ground or walk/swim, don't eat it.

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timmmay

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#985125 12-Feb-2014 14:37

Talkiet:
timmmay: [snip] your body goes into "repair mode", fixes things (DNA, cancers, etc, in theory), grows new brain cells [snip]

Lost me right there. Quack.

I have no idea, could be true, could be rubbish.

KiwiNZ: After several years on corticosteroids and being wheelchair bound I had put on weight. When the Govt approved the new drug treatment I am now on I have been able to out and about more without the chair and I am also no longer on steroids. <snip>

Nice one, well done. I guess long term you just have to find a way to reduce your energy intake to match your expenditure, different ways will suit different people.

jonathan18: I've been doing the 5:2 diet for over six months now and, through that and increasing exercise, have lost over 13kg. My comments, in reply to earlier posts:

This CAN be a sustainable and long-term life-style change, as opposed to a fad. I've tried other diets before and never lasted in the end - takes too much will power and I love food too much! This gives the ability to have one's cake and eat it too.

It's quite clear in the book that the two days can be reduced to one once you reach your goal weight. This reduces the affect on one's life by half! While I don't hate the diet days, I'm looking forward to getting to this point.

What I think one of the weakest problems of the diet is the lack of guidence as to what to eat, not just how much. It needs to be combined with other knowledge/awareness of good eating.

That said, if you do it properly, it totally enhances your eating patterns for the rest of the week through, at a minimum, making you aware of the impact of your eating decisions. It really does improve one's knowldge of food - for example, finding out how many calories in rice (which I don't touch on diet days) has resulted in us eating less and also far less often.

Nice one :) As you've said since you only really diet 1-2 days a week, only two meals off, it's quite easy to see "the light at the end of the tunnel" so it's not much of a hardship for long. I'm up to 3 days this week, but that's for a special event. Food tastes better and you eat less overall.

True about the lack of guidelines what to eat, but there's plenty of places to help with that. Higher protein, lower carb, natural rather than processed, lower GI, etc.

I was in the UK last year, I managed to get up to around 85kg, eating pizza, burgers, drinking every day, and not doing much exercise. Stupid, but it was a holiday. My next holiday I'll still be fasting every 3rd day or so, plus eating and drinking moderately - after an initial splurge most likely. It's taken a lot of effort to get down to around 74-75kg that I am now, I don't want to have to do it all over again!

MikeB4

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#985132 12-Feb-2014 14:42

geekiegeek: What to eat is easy. Keep to the outside edge of the supermarket, i.e. fresh produce and meat. the isles are full of highly processed foods that are high in salt, sugar and gods knows what else.

If it didn't grow in the ground or walk/swim, don't eat it.

Unfortunately a lot of what grew in the ground is valueless by the time it hits the supermarket shelves. Fruit and veges in many cases have spent months in the chillers so the toxins etc have built to quite high levels. Also there all manner of chemical treatments
done to make them look better once they reach the shelf. E.G Buy silver beet around lunch time buy the time you go to cook it its a shrivelled up limp mess.

Because of this we decided to grow a lot of veges ourselves and the difference in taste and goodness is amazing, I can say Silverbeet in the morning and it still looks fresh and upright by the time we cook it at night.

I have found that fresh home grown Fruit and Vege has much more goodness in it that you actually need to consume less

tdgeek

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#985144 12-Feb-2014 14:45

Timmay said, I was in the UK last year, I managed to get up to around 85kg, eating pizza, burgers, drinking every day, and not doing much exercise. Stupid, but it was a holiday. My next holiday I'll still be fasting every 3rd day or so, plus eating and drinking moderately - after an initial splurge most likely. It's taken a lot of effort to get down to around 74-75kg that I am now, I don't want to have to do it all over again!

Yep, I see that as instead of blow out then suck it up, it can become, bit O fun, then bit O minor management after that. Not too much excess equals not to much to get back

Fred99

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#985158 12-Feb-2014 14:52

tdgeek: Does all food have to have calories labelled?

With some exceptions - but generally yes:
http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/consumer/labelling/panels/Pages/default.aspx

Of course at point of sale, someone who's colourblind (red green) like me, and with slight presbyopia, can't read many of the panels without donning reading glasses. I often shop at a supermarket in what I guess could be called a "less affluent" part of town. I doubt that many shoppers there would read the panels if they could, nor would many care if they could understand what anything on the panel means. I'm not saying that trying to be smug - or harsh, but the food nutritional information panels are practically useless - except to a small minority of people.
A simplified "traffic light" system might be a good idea.

nzkiwiman

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#985162 12-Feb-2014 14:56

On Monday due to timing more than anything I skipped lunch and my normal can of coke to wash it down with. My job requires me to change our backup tapes which means a walk up the hills of Dunedin. It surprised me how good I felt afterwards compared to eating lunch and then going. I was a soggy sweaty mess when I came back but I put it down to finally having a summer day. After walking the dogs after work (which is normal) I did feel a tad sick and put it down to not eating at lunch. A normal dinner fixed that

After reading this and my earlier comments, I decided that I may as well repeat Monday on purpose and see how good or bad I feel at the end of the day. My problem is just what I eat for dinner. Trying to choose something to get for dinner that is under 600 calories, is not full of fat and doesn't contain white bread, rice, pasta or potatoes is a lot harder than I thought.

Cruskits and canned tuna ... with a slice or 6 of ham :-)

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#985168 12-Feb-2014 15:06

nzkiwiman: On Monday due to timing more than anything I skipped lunch and my normal can of coke to wash it down with. My job requires me to change our backup tapes which means a walk up the hills of Dunedin. It surprised me how good I felt afterwards compared to eating lunch and then going. I was a soggy sweaty mess when I came back but I put it down to finally having a summer day. After walking the dogs after work (which is normal) I did feel a tad sick and put it down to not eating at lunch. A normal dinner fixed that

After reading this and my earlier comments, I decided that I may as well repeat Monday on purpose and see how good or bad I feel at the end of the day. My problem is just what I eat for dinner. Trying to choose something to get for dinner that is under 600 calories, is not full of fat and doesn't contain white bread, rice, pasta or potatoes is a lot harder than I thought.

Cruskits and canned tuna ... with a slice or 6 of ham :-)

LOL

I will research based on Timmays thread. I like salads, but I also like my mums dressing. Condensed milk, sugar, malt vinegar, mustard powder . That makes it for me, but maybe more salad and less dressing. As Timmay said, calibrate. No need to sacrifice or suffer or feel like OMG, calibrate a tad that's what I will do, to make it sustainable. If I can do that, it is a lifestyle change and not a diet, which we perceive as a struggle

timmmay

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#985177 12-Feb-2014 15:17

Typical dinners for me, aiming for 600 calories:
- Paneer based curry, one without cream. Carrots on the side instead of rice. No naan.
- Three eggs, 25g cheese, two pieces of toast. Add half a can of beans if you want to go over 600cal a bit.
- Tofu (or others could have cold roast chicken or cooked stead) salad, with a little salad dressing, a few olives, most mostly raw salad veges.
- Taste of India canned curry, with broccoli and carrot.

I eat a fairly limited selection on my fast days, it's easier.

MikeB4

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#985190 12-Feb-2014 15:41

Fasting is not good. One thing the human body is good at is preparing itself for time without food. It does this by storing energy etc and does so in the form of fat therefore eventually weight loss will diminish and one could find weight gain quite a bit when food is consumed again as the body stores this away in fat.

The best way to stop the body storing energy as fat is to give it the energy it needs regularly. However you have to determine how much energy your body needs. When a human is still growing the energy is used for growth, heat production and body maintenance and activity. Once fully grown the energy required depending on life style diminishes with age and activity levels, hence why teenagers are eating machines especially teenage boys. However a big mistake we make is as we grow older and slower we do not make energy intake adjustments and the body receives more energy than it needs, however
it does not discard it, the body stores it for future famine by way of fat.

Put simply if one is gaining weight, one is giving the body more energy than needed ( or drug altered) so the simple answer is fill the tank with less. However if you don't fill it it will store what it gets for protection hence my previous point regarding fasting.

Fasting may reduce weight initially but it will not be sustainable and health issues will make an appearance along with things such as reduced cognitive abilities, compromised immunity etc etc . Eat is better to eat small and eat often for a speedy metabolism, a correctly fuelled body that receives the fuel regularly will not need to store for famine and uses what it is receiving.

Don't forget the one thing we need most, water.

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