Just2109's Journal, 26 May 2017

The first few weeks are trial and error :) You get better at it with time :) There's a few ways to keep your fast days(500 calorie days) on track. One method is to combine the rules of 16:8 Intermittent Fasting with the 5:2 Fast Diet. To do this is simple - you dont eat any solid food before midday and you stop eating solid food by 8pm. This gives you a 8 hour window to eat food and a 16 hour window of no food. During those 16 hours you can have water, green tea, coffe/tea(very little milk and use a sweetener instead of sugar), zero sugar soft drinks like coke zero. Yes you are skipping breakfast and this helps because once u eat your 1st meal in a day you trigger digestion and that starts creating the cravings for food throughout the day. Google info about Intermittent Fasting. Many of us who follow the 5:2 Fast Diet have opted to make it a 4:3 Fast Diet whereby we have our fast days on Mon, Wed and Fri(you can choose your own days). This gives you more fat burning during your week and if you fail one of your fast days then it automatically becomes a 5:2 week instead of a 4:3 :) 

Thank you. I will give that a try next week. Tell me, on your non fasting days - do you have your full calorie allowance according to the RDI? Or do you still reduce it? I'm allowed 2100 according to my calculation - but in the non fast days I try for 1200-1500 instead. 

Well you have to experiment over the next few weeks and please take measurements of yourself because the scale will not show you all your progress. I started my first weeks by staying more or less my RDI limit on my non-fasting days. Then the following week I tweaked things and decided to aim for a maximum of 75% of my RDI. I was less restrictive on weekends. Then a few weeks later I tweaked things again and decided to make my Tuesdays 75% of my RDI but also make it as a low carb day. My next tweak thereafter was to see how long I can go after midday on a fast day before I eat my 1st meal and in a few weeks I was able to eat my 1st meal after 5pm. This was further tweaked to completely forego any food at all and now my fast days are a maximum of 25 calories obtained from a cup of green tea and two cups of coffee and a glass of coke zero so its basically a liquid only fast day. This has resulted in me being able to indulge alot more on the weekends and still lose fat/weight. My next tweak will be to make my Thursdays as a low carb day. It's all about what you find to be sustainable and you must make small changes each time.