Anyone doing 5/2?

minimiss669

If there is anyone who is practicing intermittent fasting in any capacity, I would like to continue a discussion about this method as a way to decrease calorie intake.

DancingMoosie

My husband used to do it. I think he did 500 calories on his 2 low days. I would prep his meal/snacks and then make a low carb dinner we could share.

the_super_mason

I’m doing 8/16 where my window opens at 11am and closes at 7pm. I consume about 2000 calories within my window with exercise. I IF for six days a week and let my Sunday’s just be. I tend to see that even those days fall close to the same window of eating. When I started I did 12/12, 10/14, and then 8/16. It really just boils down to the mindset to stop consuming food at a reasonable time so your body can digest it.

minimiss669

DancingMoosie wrote: »

My husband used to do it. I think he did 500 calories on his 2 low days. I would prep his meal/snacks and then make a low carb dinner we could share.

How is his progress with this method, if you don't mind me asking.

minimiss669

the_super_mason wrote: »

I’m doing 8/16 where my window opens at 11am and closes at 7pm. I consume about 2000 calories within my window with exercise. I IF for six days a week and let my Sunday’s just be. I tend to see that even those days fall close to the same window of eating. When I started I did 12/12, 10/14, and then 8/16. It really just boils down to the mindset to stop consuming food at a reasonable time so your body can digest it.

It sounds like you started out slower and worked your way up to a longer fasting period. I am glad to hear that worked for you because sometimes I think I have to follow something perfectly for it to work.

ravengirl2014

I have done 16/8 for months at a time while I was losing weight...I had lost 68 pds...now after some medication weight gain I am back doing it again...it has only been a week back and I have lost 4 pds...I changed my window though...I eat between 7am-3pm (sometimes closer to 2pm) it is the only thing working for me!!!

lgfrie

I used to do 5:2, a long time ago, with my wife. We had success with it from a weight loss point of view but found it too easy to decide not to do the "2" part when it rolled around in the week LOL Eventually the whole thing fell by the wayside.

We started doing 16:8 (and precise calorie counting) back in May and have stuck with it almost every day since. I've lost about 65 pounds, my wife 45-ish. I think this is the IF approach for us, though lately I've been doing 17:7 or 18:6 - in other words, slightly narrower eating windows.

I really like the discipline and structure of IF - "here's when you can eat your food, and here's when you can't". That doesn't work for everyone but definitely works for me. It's the only thing that holds me back from bad behaviors with night time snacking/binging.

DancingMoosie

melissawolf946 wrote: »

DancingMoosie wrote: »

My husband used to do it. I think he did 500 calories on his 2 low days. I would prep his meal/snacks and then make a low carb dinner we could share.

How is his progress with this method, if you don't mind me asking.

I just asked him about it and he basically doesn't remember. He didn't like it and didn't stick with it. He had better success when he started tracking calories on his own and cutting out a lot of excess sugar and carbs(like regular yoplait, chips, bread, sodas, and juice). His normal lunch is some meat and cheese or hard-boiled eggs and sugar free clear soda. He snacks on apple and banana, nuts, light Greek yogurt, and then we eat meat with veggies for dinner.

Diatonic12

lgfrie wrote: »

I used to do 5:2, a long time ago, with my wife. We had success with it from a weight loss point of view but found it too easy to decide not to do the "2" part when it rolled around in the week LOL Eventually the whole thing fell by the wayside.

We started doing 16:8 (and precise calorie counting) back in May and have stuck with it almost every day since. I've lost about 65 pounds, my wife 45-ish. I think this is the IF approach for us, though lately I've been doing 17:7 or 18:6 - in other words, slightly narrower eating windows.

I really like the discipline and structure of IF - "here's when you can eat your food, and here's when you can't". That doesn't work for everyone but definitely works for me. It's the only thing that holds me back from bad behaviors with night time snacking/binging.

'When it came time for the '2' to roll around it fell by the wayside'....ROFL. So much truth and common horse sense. At one time there were over 7000 people on an IF thread and all of them have flown over the coop. Nadda one has come back to report their long term success or permanent weight stability with any version of intermittent fasting. It's now called TRE. I'm there every day but I haven't fasted a single day. The handful that are left practice TRE which is often called IF but it's not because we are eating every single day and to call it fasting is just another major disconnect for the brain. The brain tries to make sense out of things that don't make any sense at all.

Periods of eating and sleeping used to be called a normal average day in the life of a human but we've made food so complicated while overthinking everything. Like @lgfrie, we can learn to moderate ourselves with foods and I simply moderate my hours of eating like I used to do when I was a kid. I call it returning back to my original factory settings when we all sat down for 3 meals aday, believing that our mothers would put those meals back on the table at the regular appointed times on the daily. Nothing intermittent about it. It was consistency, consistency, consistency for the WIN.

lemurcat2

Isn't eating 3 meals a day different (in theory) than TRE (i.e., IF that includes a time window)? I do 3 meals a day (sometimes 2 on the weekend) and don't snack between meals and find that very helpful for me -- I was never a late night snacker but I would eat mindlessly between meals at work when food was out and available. I also find I get used to eating at my usual times, whatever they are, but for me this has zero to do with a limited window -- I like breakfast after my morning workout and before work and dinner after work and home-cooked, so that's usually quite a distance apart (I sometimes have as big a gap or bigger between lunch and dinner as dinner and breakfast). On Friday or weekends I sometimes fall into an IF pattern, but only because if I work out later I might skip breakfast and if I go out to eat before the theater or a concert I eat earlier and save calories for it.

For me (as someone who doesn't do a window), the reasons why it works behind 3 meals a day, no snacks, and the only between 12 and 7 (or whatnot) plans seem the same (have specific eating times and have it be off limits otherwise), but most who do TRE insist that it's very different and preferable to do TRE (for reasons I don't accept, but whatever). For me, by contrast, eating whenever within a limited period is far less workable than just not eating when it's not mealtime.

A friend of mine does 5:2 and loves it -- she was never overweight and lost vanity weight and maintains not tracking on the 5 days and then eating 500 on the 2. The way that works seems quite different to me than TRE; it's about not having to restrict on 5 days a week, which is easier for some.

But this is just something that always strikes me; people should of course do what they like and I can see why 5:2 and TRE each work for some.

sijomial

I lost my weight successfully with 5:2 and personally found it less objectionable compared to an everyday deficit. Lost my excess weight at planned rate of 1lb / week and transitioned easily to maintenance at goal weight.

But a word or two of caution!

• Many people tried it and hated it.
• Some people shouldn't do it at all (see the fastdiet website for details).
• Many people on this site and elsewhere did it wrong / do it wrong (or at least contrary to how it was designed to be followed) and also have a substantial deficit on the days they are supposed to be eating at maintenance. It's the days at maintenance that make the fasting days tolerable and also keep the weekly deficit sensible.

lgfrie

Diatonic12 wrote: »

Periods of eating and sleeping used to be called a normal average day in the life of a human but we've made food so complicated while overthinking everything. Like @lgfrie, we can learn to moderate ourselves with foods and I simply moderate my hours of eating like I used to do when I was a kid. I call it returning back to my original factory settings when we all sat down for 3 meals aday, believing that our mothers would put those meals back on the table at the regular appointed times on the daily. Nothing intermittent about it. It was consistency, consistency, consistency for the WIN.

There's truth in that, but I think the real issue is the constant, incessant availability of highly palatable, high calorie foods. When I was a kid, there were three meals a day and no snacks (although, oddly, I managed to be a fat kid). Mom would put some crappy tuna casserole with a side of squeaky undercooked green beans on the table and there was no great desire to gorge on it. That's a lot different than many people experience nowadays.

Within easy walking distance of my house, which is 30 miles outside a city and not an urban hot spot, is a strip mall with a pizza place, Philly cheesesteak sub shop, a bar with an 8 page menu of fried, junky foods (for dieters, that works just great with the alcohol!!!), a burrito joint, a bagel shop where the bagels weighs 7 ounces (490 calories for the bread alone), a Chinese fast food/take out, a Baskin Robbins, a make your own frozen yogurt and pay by the weight place with toppings like nutella and crushed oreo cookies, a gas station with racks and racks of chips and cookies for those too lazy to go into a food store, and of course, a supermarket just in case one can't find one's preferred snack, open till the wee hours.

We weren't biologically designed to be smothered in highly palatable, hyper caloric foods 24 hours a day. We were designed to stuff our faces on woolly mammoth when we managed to catch one, with the knowledge that the next might not come along for a while. We have exactly the opposite programming for food than what's needed for the ubiquitious junk food scenario in which we live.

imho that is not "why we're fat" but is certainly "why some of us are obese".

Take away all those burritos and pizzas and egg rolls and drinks and fried shrimp and mozzarella sticks and replace it all with bananas, nuts, and berries, and I suspect the obesity epidemic would not be an epidemic. You can only eat so many bananas before you find something better to do with your time.

So everyone must figure out a way to coexist with these hyperpalatable, massively caloric temptations surrounding us all day and night. Obviously many of us really struggle with it, over the course of a whole lifetime, battling it everyday.

IF/TRE, whatever you want to call it, isn't magic and doesn't work for everyone, but it does work for some. For me, I think it's knowing that as long as I stay with my 6-8 hour eating window and count calories, I lose the weight, and as soon as I veer off the path, at best I maintain and that's best case. I can have 0 calories worth of junk food outside my eating window, or I can have 2,000, but I have not proven to myself that I can have 150. I am capable of going up to that walking-distance strip mall with all the aforementioned junky foods and having NOTHING, but I can't have one small bowl of wonton soup; I'm either on plan or not. What IF does for me is put a line in the sand which says, simply, if it's before 11 or after 7 pm, there is NO eating, period. And for some reason, that works. I think the reason it works is because I know the repercussions of getting off that train and I don't wanna go there.

In the end, everyone has to find something that works for them, and there are a lot of individualized variables in play.

minimiss669

ravengirl2014 wrote: »

I have done 16/8 for months at a time while I was losing weight...I had lost 68 pds...now after some medication weight gain I am back doing it again...it has only been a week back and I have lost 4 pds...I changed my window though...I eat between 7am-3pm (sometimes closer to 2pm) it is the only thing working for me!!!

I'm thinking that would work best for me, too. Being less full at night would be the best option. Do you get hungry at night then? What do you do instead of eat?

minimiss669

These responses have been great and very helpful. I think I'll stick with a 16/8 and see if I can reduce my calorie intake that way. Or maybe a combination of a 16/8, 5/2 pattern. And of course counting calories. Thanks everyone!

Diatonic12

@lgfrie We need to give ourselves permission to create our own food management plan that we can live with for the rest of our lives. Our mileage will always vary, we have acquired tastes from our raising or cultures. I know myself and I can't follow menu plans written by other people. Squeaky green beans. Reminds me of frozen peas with those tiny pearl onions, still hard as little brickbats on your plate. Those were for special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas. When the pearls came out you knew it was extra special. I'd still go back and do it all over again. Mom's homecooking. I still have her but I made her a grilled steak, baked potato, mixed greens salad and roasted brussels for lunch. Yes, I did. I see to it that she has nothing but the best I can do for her. It's my turn now.