5:2 diet question

annachanges14

i have been doing it for 4 months now and lost 8 kg since but the past 2 weeks I just can’t eat 500 calories it is always around 600 calories, has women tried this and still lost weight?

sollyn23l2

What's wrong with 600 calories? Thinking you can't go over 500 at all for the day is a bit absurd. 600 should yield pretty similar results in this case as 500.

springlering62

I’m assuming that this is two days at 500 and 5 days at something else?

what’s the goal the other days and are you meeting it?

AnnPT77

If you've been losing roughly 2kg per month, on average half a kg per week approximately, that implies that however much you've been eating on whatever schedule you've been eating it, you've been eating on average roughly 550 calories daily below your maintenance calorie needs (the total number of calories you burn in all ways).

I completely understand that you've been achieving that by eating your estimated maintenance calories or thereabouts most days, but only 500 calories on two days.

What difference would it make if you eat 600 calories on two days instead of 500? Do the math.

With 600 calories on the low days, you're eating 200 more calories per week, an average of 29 calories more daily than when eating 500 on the low days. Since a kg of fat constitutes roughly 7700 calories, and you've been losing half a kg per week, that's around 3850 calories of fat weekly (7 x 550 or 7700 divided by 2). If you eat 600 instead of 500, you'd now be losing about 3647 calories worth of fat weekly (7 x (550 - 29)), which is 474 g of fat weekly instead of 500 g of fat weekly.

So, if you keep eating 600, instead of losing about 2kg per month, you'd lose about 1.9kg per month. That's assuming I did all the arithmetic right, which is an iffy proposition, as always. 😆 You can check it. I did round to whole numbers and assumed 4-week months, BTW, so there's some approximation in there.

Personally, if it were me, that tenth of a kilo or so per month difference wouldn't much worry me.

However, if appetite is starting to be a problem on your low days, and there's no other obvious trigger, it might be a good plan to eat at maintenance for a couple of weeks, all 7 days. Sometimes an appetite spike signals that it's time for a maintenance break, for best overall results. Four months is maybe long enough to consider that. Supposedly, 5:2 may minimize adaptive thermogenesis, but (1) maintenance practice is good, and (2) what would it hurt, really.

annachanges14

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48725495#Comment_48725495

yes I understand that as a calorie goal you find it absurd but I read if you want to practice this method for fasting reasons or fat loss in general there is a theory behind eating 500 for women and 600 for men. That is why I was asking if someone tried to do it at 600 for woman and it still worked . But thank you for your reply

annachanges14

Thank you for taking the time and answering really . I havent thought about doing maintanance . I honestly think this is what I need. I have been doing it easily the first 4 months and now I am getting cravings again maybe it is stress in general or my body needs a break. Thank you I think i will try maintanance for 2 weeks and see how it goes . I didnt lose any weight though this week. I was eating at maintenance and 600 calories 2 days a week but lost only 0.1 kg. So it is time for a change

annachanges14

Thank you for taking the time and answering really . I havent thought about doing maintanance . I honestly think this is what I need. I have been doing it easily the first 4 months and now I am getting cravings again maybe it is stress in general or my body needs a break. Thank you I think i will try maintanance for 2 weeks and see how it goes . I didnt lose any weight though this week. I was eating at maintenance and 600 calories 2 days a week but lost only 0.1 kg. So it is time for a change

springlering62

So if I’m reading this correctly, you were eating at maintenance five days a week, and only 600 calories a day for two days a week? 

And now you’re planning to change it up by eating at maintenance daily in an effort to crank loss back up again? 

And you’re hungry? 

I think you need to recalculate your calories, including an honest evaluation of your activity levels (I’m betting you’re hammering away at that too and maybe not eating any of the extra calories?). 

Are you weighing and logging your food accurately and honestly? 

We have so little info. Where did you start? You’ve been doing this a little over four months? You’ve lost over 17 pounds. That’s four pounds a month, a pound a week. That’s a darn good pace. How far are your from goal? Those last five or ten pounds can take months. 

Don’t try to self-flagellate yourself into loss. It just comes back to bite you in the *kitten*. Do you want to keep the pounds already lost off, or be back in a year talking about having regained and needing to start over again? 

And don’t under-eat yourself into poor health. 

Said with much love and understanding. I did that at one point. Having to out weight back on is harder, mentally, than having to lose it in the first place. 

Reevaluate your goals. Someone here yesterday claimed they wanted to be “the same weight they were when they started high school”. WTF? Most of us were 13. We can get really really weird and dangerous and demoralizing ideas in our heads. I know. I’m the worst. I wanted my wedding day weight, age 24. Worst idea ever, although it seemed like a great goal at the time. I was skin and bones. 

We are here to support you and help you make good decisions. You’ve got to make those on your own, though. Don’t listen to us if you feel we’re wrongheaded. These are very very personal choices, just make sure they’re good ones. 

And PS, god bless you for still hanging in and being here, and responding to other posts! 😘

neanderthin

I'm quite familiar with 5:2 and have been using that for periodic weight loss over the last 3 or 4 years. Are your 2 days non consecutive or back to back? what does your diet look like? What are you eating during those 2 days, specifically.😊

neanderthin

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48729367#Comment_48729367

There's actually no scientific logic based on biocemistry it's just 25% of the recommended USDA recommendations for gender, females 2000 calories daily and males 2400 calories so the 25% is the 500 and 600. Fundamentally it means nothing. Basically don't worry about it, would be my advice, imo of course.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48729371#Comment_48729371

That sounds like a good plan to me.

Reasons why I think that:

1. Sometimes, during an extended time of calorie deficit, a break is good for both psychological and physical reasons. The need for this, or timing of this, varies among people, but aspects in your post made me think you've been at this long enough that it's starting to be more stressful for you.
2. Eventually - or so we hope - you will finish losing all the weight you wish to lose. At that point, you'll presumably want to stay at that weight long term, ideally permanently. One way or another, you'll need to eat maintenance calories at that point. Practicing those habits now and then during loss can be a good thing . . . a little like how actors rehearse a play, y'know? Maintenance practice can be helpful.

I want to be clear about one thing: A PP said " . . . now you’re planning to change it up by eating at maintenance daily in an effort to crank loss back up again?" I am not saying that eating maintenance calories for two weeks will crank up weight loss, at least not in the sense that you'd expect to lose weight in those two weeks.

In reality, if you do it, you'll possibly see a small scale jump in those two weeks from extra water retention (to digest/metabolize the added increment of food) and extra waste in the digestive tract on the way to the exit (because of a bit more total food volume on the input side). Neither of those things are body fat, but they'll show up on the scale.

At true maintenance calories, body fat level will stay constant during that time. When you go back to a deficit, the water/waste weight - if you saw any - will drop off gradually. For me, in a more extreme calorie increase scenario than we're talking about here, it can take as much as 2 weeks for that water/waste weight to fully dissipate. In a younger woman with menstrual cycles, it could seem to take a little longer, depending on how that effect interplays with any hormone-related water retention she may experience during her monthly cycle. It's still about water/waste, not fat. It's not worth worrying about.

I do think a maintenance break can potentially give you better weight loss results after that time period. Why? You mentioned finding it difficult to stick with your planned calorie intake recently. A break may help you refresh and return to the routine you've found effective with a renewed attitude.

Also, if there's systemic stress in the picture, that stress can in part be from the cumulative physical and psychological stress of 4 months of calorie deficit. Simplistically, systemic stress can increase cortisol, cortisol can increase water retention, and water retention shows up on the scale.

Sometimes people see a surprising scale drop after a maintenance break, once everything settles out. That's not a guarantee, but it can happen, and part of the reason can be that stress/cortisol effect. It's still not body fat, so it's not meaningful with respect to fat loss . . . but if it does happen, it may provide some useful clues about systemic stress levels and the possible need for a better overall stress management approach.

There's a good thread here about the research related to "diet breaks" and why they may be helpful for some people. It's a good read, and I recommend it - including the out-links in the first post that are mentioned as vital info.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks

Best wishes!