2/5 fasting

amathist

Anyone doing/ attempted the 2/5 intermittent fasting, my doctor has recommended this and I am a little apprehensive, wondering if anyone has had any experience with this diet???
Thanks
-lisa

smdelzer

I don't know what that is, and I'm curious.

moonstone82

smdelzer wrote: »

I don't know what that is, and I'm curious.

That’s five days of normal eating, with little thought to calorie control and a slice of pie for pudding if that’s what you want. Then, on the other two days, you reduce your calorie intake to 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men.

andiebaco

It is the second time I am doing it and I love it, I have already lost a couple of kilos since I started it three weeks ago. It is working for me but I understand that it doesn't work for a lot of people.

Basically, you choose two non-consecutive days to have 500 calories, while the other 5 you will eat your TDEE (I eat my maintenance calories). At the end of the week you end up having more or less the average as if you are constantly restricting calories.

The first two weeks are the hardest, the trick is to plan ahead and prepare fast day food the way that you use the most of the calories allowance! Vegetable, egg whites, a bit of LF feta cheese, even avocado! It is all part of my fast dinner (I usually skip breakfast, have a tiny lunch - plan salad with vinegar - and have my "big dinner"). As the time goes by you realize that you notice more what you are eating (I don't like to waste my calories on non-fast days in things that I don't adore, just because!) and it allows you to have a window to be social and eat out (which is for me the biggest turn off for restricting diets).

Mnaminal

I've had great success with 5/2. Since I'm very active and train up to 5 days a week, I eat about 1700-1800 calories on my "normal" days and 600-700 on my fasting days.

Last year I lost about 15lbs pretty easily and kept it off for several months when my diet and exercise went to hell (my MIL was misdiagnosed with a major illness and it took several months of running between Chicago and St. Louis to get it sorted).

I really enjoyed that I could maintain my social life without feeling like I was screwing my weight loss up. I would eat out in moderation and still lose weight, which for some reason didn't work for me when I was doing straight calorie restriction. I just restarted with the hopes of losing the weight I gained back and make it the rest of the way to my goal while training to significantly improve my 5k time.