5:2 intermittent fasting

Why 5 days of 1200?

You should be doing 2 days of 500 kcal for a woman and 5 days normal eating, at least your BMR if not your TDEE.

Why 5 days of 1200?

You should be doing 2 days of 500 kcal for a woman and 5 days normal eating, at least your BMR if not your TDEE.

Correct.

The point of ADF is that you are not so restrictive on calories every single day.
500 per day on your fast days, and your BMR or TDEE on the feast days. By sticking to just 1200 on feast days you are still going to run into the issues of having to skimp and keep close tabs every single day.

After you are on this for awhile it is so easy to know how much to eat. Fast day is easy to plan out, and a feast day of your TDEE is alot more than those people who are trying to eat at a deficit every day.

I am trying the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet. Two days of 600 calories and 5 days of 1200. Has anyone else tried this?

Not setting up the 5:2 correctly.
Way too deep of a deficit.

@kellmorris48 as others have said, you're eating too little by this method. I used 5:2 successfully for some time (I now practice IF but that's another story).

There are 2 ways you can safely set up 5:2 for weight loss.

1. If you know your maintainance calories, eat those on your eating days and your deficit on facting days will drive your loss.
2. if you don't know your maintenance calories use MFP and set your rate of loss at (say) 1lb. This figure x 7 is your weekly calories to lose 1lb. So, if you eat 600 cals 2 days, take your weekly cals, subtract 1200 and then divide the remainder by 5 to get your calories to eat on full eating days.

Example

Let's say that MFP indicates that to lose you need to eat 1600 daily.

That is 1600 x 7 = 11,200 per week.

You eat 600 cals on Monday and Wednesday leaving 10,000 for the remaining 5 days.

10,000/5 = 2000 cals per day Tue,Thur, Fri, Sat and Sun.