5/2 diet

neenk85 wrote: »

Is anyone doing the 5/2 diet? I've been stuck with counting calories can't seem to get back into and wanted to try something dIfferant for a fresh start! I just want to know on your non fast days on this diet can you earn more calories with exercise or are you better to just stick to your TDEE, also any advice or tips for this way would be great

Well first off your TDEE would include exercise, so you have to determine which calorie in method you are following. NEAT or TDEE

My suggestion is to have your 500 calorie days planned out. Meals that are low calorie and high volume are very helpful. Don't wing it, it's too easy to eat too much.

When I did 5:2 I used the myfitnesspal method for my 5 maintenance days a week as my exercise levels/calorie burns are very varied. That's effectively a variable TDEE as opposed to an average TDEE.
But the average TDEE method (which includes exercise or it wouldn't be your Total Daily Energy Expenditure) would work too.

The two fasting days are just a set calorie limit though, no extras for exercise.

My tip would be to experiment to see how best to use your very limited fast day calorie allowance. I liked lunch and dinner, my wife preferred breakfast and dinner. We both found high taste foods far more satisfying than bland foods.

When I tried it, I found 800 calories more appropriate (that was before the change) and did eat back exercise calories, so my "fast days" ended up at about 1000-1200 calories total which was not as bad as 500. To make up for that I had my other days at 1/4 kg loss, as this diet assumes not eating back exercise and (back then) 500 calories, so I had to change it to add up closer to my goal average. I did lunch and dinner.

It was pretty doable, but I found myself dreading fast days after being "spoiled" by more than a couple of days of higher calories, so I tried the every other day diet, which does 25% of TDEE one day and ad lib the next. I tweaked that too to give myself structure instead of ad lib because I wanted to have a calorie ceiling so I don't overeat. My goal was 1500 something calories to lose 1/2 kg, so I just rounded the numbers to make it neater and came up with 1000 net (1200-1400 total on average after exercise) one day and 2000 net the next, eating back exercise calories at all times. Having a clear pattern of High/low days made fast days feel like part of the routine, not a deviation from it like 5:2 felt so I didn't dread them. All I had to do to have normal hearty meals on fast days was basically skip breakfast and snacks, 500-700 calories per meal was plenty for many foods I like, so even weekends were not a problem. This is my go-to strategy whenever I feel like doing a variable calorie (fasting) system.

I wrote this wall of text to show you that you can do whatever you want with your calories and tweak the diet in any way you see fit to come up with a plan that you find easy to follow. Just start with the standard method, have at it for a week or two, see what things you hate about it, and change these things to your liking (or ditch it all together if it feels like more effort than it's worth after giving it an honest try). As long as your calories average to what you wish them to average, how you execute your plan is much more flexible than you realize, so don't get too fixated on the details.