Fast love
by maggiealderson
I’ve made an interesting discovery since posting about the Fast Diet yesterday – the word ‘diet’ provokes strong reactions. I entirely understand. I loathe the word and concept so much I covered my copy of the Fast Diet book in wrapping paper, so my daughter wouldn’t see it lying around the house. I don’t want her to grow up thinking that dieting is something all grown ups do.
Neither do I want her to spend her childhood – as I did – with a parent in ill health, so I simply have to get the weight off that I carry around my waist; the place we are constantly told is the worst risk for heart disease. Which is what killed my dad at 63 and both his parents even younger.
I’m a genetically programmed cardiac time bomb and the apple shape body has to go. I wish I could do it by taking more exercise and eating ‘in moderation’, but I know from experience I just can’t keep that up. I need clear rules and the sense of undertaking a project to stick at it.
And, as always, I’m fervently hoping this is the last ‘diet’ this yo yo dieter will ever have to do. The proof will be in the pudding – or how much less of one I resemble in a few weeks time – but here’s how it’s been so far.
Fast Day One
8.45am An hour ater than usual, had my usual breakfast of oats soaked in semi-skimmed milk, with 0% fat yogurt, half an apple chopped up and blueberries. This seems to add up to 224 calories – or nearly half my day’s allowance of 500, which is a bit scary.
11am Feel peckish, with a craving for some nice crunchy crackers. Which is exactly what I would normally be snacking on aroud this time on a normal day. Remind myself can have them tomorrow and resist.
Have another cup of tea instead. Think I will find not being able to have tea with milk, whenever I damn well want it, the hardest thing on this regime. I certainly couldn’t deal with caffeine cravings as well. So in future will measure out 100ml of milk each fasting day (100 calories) and see how far I go with it.
12.30pm Starting to feel food obsessed. This is when I would normally start thinking about what to have for lunch. Have a cup of black coffee, which is surprisingly satisfying. Once that wears off start to feel really chilled. I suffer from Raynaud’s syndrome and all my fingers go white, so I can’t type.
1.30pm Have a cup of instant miso to get fingers back. Delicious, although 84 calories seems monstrous for what is basically a mug of salty water.
2.30pm Go out for a walk with a friend to distract myself.
3.30pm Could gnaw my own arm off. I normally have a mid-afternoon snack around this time, so it’s clear my body is well programmed to expect these regular top ups.
4pm Have to go to kitchen to check options for child/husband dinner. Everywhere I look there is food. A big chunk of brie. A pomegranate my daughter has cut in half. A bowl of apples. A bow of grapes. Normal me would have happily grazed on all this without thinking about it.
4.30pm Is it really not dinner time yet? It’s hard putting just two potatoes in the oven to bake… Wonder if the family will notice they are having their dinner an hour earlier than normal.
5.10pm Can smell the baked potatoes cooking. Feel like a dog in a cartoon, could follow the scent for miles…
5.15pm OOH I think it might be time to put my fish in the oven!!! Oh, no it’s still too early. If I eat at 5.30 I’ll be climbing the walls by bedtime, although I have scheduled an orange for later… that’s how KRAZEE I am. How much orange is 100g though? Finding the food weighing aspect hard. Will have to be more stringent about it, but really don’t want my daughter seeing me do that. It’s neurotic and eating disorder-y.
Measured my waist to concentrate my mind. V v bad.
6pm Dinner! Fillet of white fish, cooked in tin foil with garlic, ginger and lemon (a combo which would make balsa wood quite palatable – actually, I wonder how many calories there are in 100g of that…?). A small mountain of spinach. Feel quite satisfied.
It was hard watching the family tuck into cold chicken and baked potatoes (with lashings of butter). Had a little bit of chicken – no idea of the weight. Find that element of this regime hard to accept. Think I will deny myself the orange to make up for it.
But I’m just about through Day One and I’ve survived and feel oddly keen to get on with the next one. Will stock up with Diet Coke and sugar free gum, although I didn’t need either today.
Also very much looking forward to the arrival of my Miracle Noodles… A friend who has already lost 5 kilos on the diet told me about them. They’re the secret of slim Japanese women, noodles made of fibre some obscure Asian vegetable, which rack up only 5 calories a packet.
7pm Finding it distressing even to read the word ‘gin’. Have a diet ginger beer in one of my best highball glasses and it hits the spot.
According to my calculations, I have eaten exactly 501 calories, although I do fear I’ve been a bit lax about milk in tea.
10pm Go to bed feeling quite hungry, but buoyed up by the knowledge I can have a monster fry up in the morning.
The next morning: didn’t feel hungry at all… Less hungry than usual, in fact. I’m a big breakfast eater, but feel slightly queasy at the thought.
Amazed. Would be quite happy to face another day of fasting and it feels a bit like I’m ‘breaking my diet’ not to, but I’m going up to London, so I’m going to eat normally today and fast again tomorrow.
Fasting Day 2
Woke feeling really hungry after fisting chocolate raisins into my mouth last night in panic at the thought of the food restriction coming today. Find it hard not to eat daughter’s breakfast bacon…
Made myself weigh everything and used water instead of milk on the oats, which was fine. Measured out the 200ml of milk for the day – not much of it. If I can’t have enough cups of tea from that will have to switch to vile, lower-caloried skimmed milk, which I loathe.
11am Postman delivered Miracle Noodles! Can have two packs with my dinner and will only be 10 cals. Here’s praying they are edible.
12 noon Feel really hungry again and slightly crazed with it. Re-read book and reminded myself that I could snack, if desperate but the whole point is to give your body a good long stretch with no food to deal with at all. Had one spoonful of the coleslaw I made for dinner the day before and a precious cup of tea.
Rest of day much the same as yesterday’s pattern, including miso soup, which was almost too salty to bear. Think I will phase those out. A packet of sugar free gum got me through the afternoon in my office.
6pm Managed to hold out reasonably late for dinner again. Had the Miracle Noodles – the ‘fettucine’ style – with a tomato sauce and three meatballs. The meatballs and sauce taste like celestial angel food. Feel my senses have been heightened by the day without snacking.
The noodles are pretty foul, like hot shredded plastic bags, but with the sauce mostly drowning the taste, they were bearable and have certainly filled me up. They would be much better in soup or a stirfry and that’s how I’ll use them in future.
7.15pm Have found today much harder than the first fast. I feel quite weak and want to go to bed. I think next week I’ll do my fast days two days apart – say, Monday and Thursday.
I’m also going to follow religiously one of the daily menu plans in the book, or from the Sunday Times Style supplement, as I am a little concerned I’ve gone through all this and busted my 500 limit unintentionally and I won’t lose any weight.
Am surprised to find there is still 50ml of milk left in the fridge at bedtime, so that’s going to be fine.
One thing I have realised doing this, is that I am like a prawn in our kitchen: swimming around cleaning up all the little bits other people haven’t eaten. My daughter left two licked Orea halves in her lunch box today and last week, they would have been in my mouth in a flash. Equally I would have hovered up all the delicious slightly burned little crumbs of meat balls left in the frying pan. Today I stopped myself. No point making such an effort and then blowing it for some cheap biscuits.
No fasting now for three days. And no blogging about it for a couple of weeks, when I’ll tell you how I got on.
Oo…am v fascinated fellow yoyo *dieter* … Sigh. V interested to hear how this goes. Am sooooo pleased to see your posts appearing in my in box again … Just enjoy your writing so much.
Marg
Oh praise the Lord, someone I don’t have to explain it to. IT’S THE BBC’S DOCTOR! HE;S NOT SOME CRANK! ha ha ha. Will report in a few weeks xxxx
Maggie, I actually found this distressing to read. If your concern is purely to do with your health, it seems like you are going about this in most ineffective way possible. While some of what you are doing sounds sensible (avoiding ‘cleaning up’ the kitchen into your mouth, something I am always guilty of myself) the starvation element seems to go against everything you should be doing to your body. I think the fact that you (understandably) want to hid this from your daughter indicates that you actually know this.
I’m sorry if this sounds judgemental, but as someone who has been reading your articles since I was not all that much older than your daughter (13 year old me used to pour over the Good Weekend), I really hate the idea of someone I thought of as clever, interesting and full of good advice doing something so destructive to herself.
Hi Emily, I appreciate your concern and I’m very touched. But read the book before you condemn it. The science is compelling. My late father was a doctor and I know the difference between quacks and proper research. The doctor who made the original docco is the BBC’s staff medical correspondent – you could not find someone more suspicious of crank diets. His own cholesterol and blood sugar levels went from dangerous to ideal in the space of a few weeks. He made his conclusions after interviewing leading researchers around the world. It’s not a crank thing. xxx
I think with every new theory you need to go with it in the beginning, work out which bits of it work for you and feel right; and then adapt it. When I first went sugar-free I didn’t deviate from the recommendations for about 9 months, then as Xmas approached I had a few little treats (actually didn’t feel as good as it used to and I felt pretty awful afterwards and had to question why we all feel we have to eat ‘big and bad’ at Xmas) and then got straight back to it after Xmas. Now I have found a threshold of what works for me. Whenever the topic comes up I am usually bombarded by people discounting the science – and the evidence; I’m 10 kilos lighter but a good healthy weight; have no reflux (I used to have heartburn constantly); I’m fitter; move more easily, blah, blah, blah. Originally all nutritionists were trained by food companies and the wheat and dairy industry, etc, etc (I’m not entirely sure of who, but the theory is correct) and all these years later nutritionists are still giving us incorrect information to appease those industries. I would put my faith in scientists – as long as they’re not sponsored by the food industry and so many of them are – over nutritionists (sorry to all those nutritionists out there). I haven’t (yet) read the book, Maggie, but will definitely have a look at it.
Keep us up-to-date with your progress; and good luck!
Oh poor maggie……it’s just hell I know…please ditch the diet gum/coke/crap it’s sooo bad for you. Good luck with it all. Try really crunchy salady things like cucumber/lettuce/carrot with NO dressings. Strangely satisfying….X
I know all that, but I need props for these early days and I don’t beat myself up about that. More important to get the waist measurement safe… x
Totally agree Maggie – sometimes it’s these little things that get us there.
Oh Maggie – you are a legend!
Full of admiration.
Look forward to hearing your progress when you feel
comfortable to blog on this excruciating subject again.
BX
PS Cant wait to hear – how were the miracle noodles?
Might have to order enormous crates of them.
This seems a very interesting thing to be doing, Maggie. I don’t know that I could do it. I like to eat breaky, morning tea, lunch and dinner, but I DO NOT EAT other people’s food leftovers. I might drink their wine, but never their food.
Seriously, you are not the family compost bin. If they don’t want it then neither should you.
Good on you for doing something about changing your family health history and giving yourself a chance to see your daughter grown into a woman.
Thanks for understanding! I hate wasting food, but I’m going to get over that… x
Just remember that it’s ‘waste’ in the bin or ‘waist’ on you. Either way, it’s not needed!
I think that’s a legacy of our parents – anything left on your plate is ‘wasted’. But it’s better to recycle the food through compost than through you.
Love your work – as always.
The Dr Mosley 5:2 diet is fascinating. When I first heard of it, thought it was just another “fad”, however, after a bit googling realised he is a reliable source of medical information.
Love your account of your fast days. A dodgy family medical history, your own past medical condition and a darling daughter are strong incentives to stick at it.
The only bit of unsolicited advice, don’t drink diet coke or any soft drink. Soft drink full of sugar and diet soft drink full of chemicals, neither of which nourish the body nor the spirit.
Loving it that you are back blogging!
Keep warm, I hear snowing in London, while we down under are burning up.xx
In the early days of going sugar-free I drank Lucozade – it MUST be the original one – and ate salt-free potato chips. I’m not sure of the calorie count, tho (I still lost weight). David Gillespie says it’s OK to drink diet coke, etc – but only for the first few weeks while you adjust. I would be a bit concerned about the chemical overload of all that artificial sweetener if you did it long-term.
I think you’ve inspired me!
I’m sure an Aussie publisher will buy the book… It’s MASSIVE in the UK, but you really need to see the docco to understand the science x
Shirataki noodles need a bit of preparation. They need a couple of really good rinses to get rid of the yuk taste. Also, if you go to an asian grocer you can probably get them on the cheaper.
No Asian grocers where i live sadly (should move). I think you’re right, I didn’t rise them enough, know for next time x
It’s a shame you’re not in Australia, Coles and Woolies stock the ‘miracle’ noodles and there is a cup-variety made from mung beans. Just look for ‘gluten-free’ as they are often calorie-free vegetable-based.
Will read the book. Have lost 10k in the last year I think largely because I was living overseas where the food was not great, and where I could not snack on things that I like. Hope to keep this weight off when I return home, so am interested in how you go. Thanks for sharing.
Dear Maggie. Hang in there. You know what you’re doing. And you know you’re human … Thanks for sharing your journey. As always, I admire your frankness and willingness to share.
Just a note of encouragement: my dear Nana, who lived until she was 92 and in quite good nick, practised regular fasting and felt much better for it. She was pretty much ahead of her times in the 50s and 60s and was big on freshly juiced fruit and veg, as well as an array of herbs. One of her favourite snacks was onion or garlic sandwiches!
Over the last couple of days I have been ruminating about ageing, partly in response to your blog. My considered opinion is that getting old sucks. However, it is inevitable, so despite the foul hair, chin bristles, troubling teeth, saggy, porridge like bits and pieces and ACHING feet, I still prefer to be old and alive rather than dead and whatever.
So, I will follow your fine example: lose some weight and become more healthy – in my own blundering way, but, as with you, using the tools and methods I know I can cope with.
Bottoms up!
This is the third time I have read about this diet, from very credible sources. Will be waiting to see what you think. Enjoying the blog tremendously. Must be harder to start this diet when it is chilly, maybe lemon juice in hot water would be enjoyable. Bon chance.
Good suggestion! will try it x
Try lime in water, even nicer. Microwave lime first for a bit in order to soften and extract even more juice. I use half a lime per cup.
Good tip re microwaving – more sanitary than rolling it under my foot, which I normally do!
Decided to join you on this diet last week. I do think it is easier when its warmer. Asparagus and celery have so few calories, 100gms of salmon at night keep me from getting hungry. Copious amounts of mineral water with a squeeze of lime. Green tea and even a few blueberries. Feel better already.
My other comment was about the Rosacea discussion. I have Rosacea and had been using Rosex. Quite independently went to an Ophthalmologist who said “By the way, you have Rosacea in your eyes”.
If your eyes are gritty and dry, think about mentioning it to your doctor. I take Minomycin, once a day for a short time but now only twice a week, which helps keeps eyes and skin healthier.
Thanks for the prompt,
Maggie you are an inspiration and thank you for sharing this journey with us, I suspect not an easy thing to do. I wish you luck and fortitude cos that’s what it will take. You may be interested to read a blog from a woman in Somerset …she has/is following this and has lost quite a bit of weight. She also is a British flower farmer and v interesting . Her name is Georgie Newbury and her website is commonfarmflowers.com. I so hope this all goes really well for you Maggie , I’ll be interested to see how it progresses! Very hot as you may have seen in Sydney yesterday, 45.7 , hottest for 139 years!!! Much cooler today, hurrah. Just another thing, when I did Dry July, I found tonic with a slice of lemon invaluable
xx
45.7!!!!!!!!!!! and snow is just falling falling falling here… nuts x ps thanks for tip off about that blog, I will look x
Bravo Maggie – Hang in there and thank you for sharing with us. I too used to “clean up” the kitchen until I read a tip to put all those leftovers for a day into a container and at the end of the day just look at what we might have put into our mouth!! Yuck – big wake up and I havent done it since, (and the neighbours chooks now love me so Im not wasting food). My addiction was crisps and biccies & cheese in the pm – have given those up and the tummy weight is dropping off slowly but surely, even allowing a treat a week. Agree with others about diet drinks – do you like peppermint or other herbal tea?? Please continue to keep us posted with your results.
Maggie I am sure this has been shown onTV in Australia. I also heard something about it on Radio National, health report maybe… Instead of horrible noodles what about steamed zucchini pealed into long strips? Just a thought.
So glad to read so many blogposts.
Good Luck with it – it will get easier. The cravings and the CONSTANT THINKING about food, diminish & you feel less like you’re depriving yourself. I’ve been a yo-yo dieter & am also a ticking cardiac time bomb – my dad had his 1st double by-pass at 43, having never smoked or drunk more than a glass of scotch before dinner.
Maggie, you are one of my favourite authors and I hope you will be around for many, many years so that you can continue to write your wonderful stories. Any diet that restricts calories will be successful in providing weightloss short term, regardless of how it is done and how strong the science is behind it (although with my experience in the world of clinical trial work and researchers, I can tell you that researchers tend to have a bias toward proving their hypotheses and statistics can lie). Biochemically, it’s a no brainer – reduce calories, regardless of how you do it, and you will lose weight – short term. What you need is a long term, realistically sustainable solution, and if you tend to accumulate adipose tissue centrally, it’s really important for you to understand why you accumulate it in this area, especially in light of your family history of CVD. It’s an area that I deal with everyday and I am sure you are aware of the seriousness of the obesity and T2DM epidemic that we are experiencing. On a personal note, my family is riddled with a history of T2DM and heart disease, which is why I’m passionate about this area and have spent a lot of my time going the ‘extra mile’ and digging deep within the medical literature to find a solution. I can now say proudly that central or abdominal adiposity is a thing of the past for my family, and in particular, my father has been able to come off his diabetes, cholesterol and hypertension medication, in addition to losing his ‘apple’ gut, so his risk factors for heart disease are now greatly reduced. In summary Maggie, life is too short for ‘yo-yo’ dieting, get down to the biochemical/physiological reasons for why you accumulate fat where you do. Professionally I can’t give any more advice than this, but what I can do is strongly recommend ‘Good Calories Bad Calories’ and ‘Why We Get Fat’ both by Gary Taubes – these may be the most important books you ever read: link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ref=pd_ybh_5#_
… also a good website: http://eatingacademy.com/start-here
Good to have you back blogging for us. I too share your search for The One (love your comparison with Taylor Swift – very funny). I look forward to updates.
Interesting timing as the diet is featured in today’s Weekend Australian Magazine.
It is absolutely massive in the UK – this whole science of fasting is the big research area for scientists looking for the answers for preventing diseases associated with age, as well as weight loss. That’s the main reason I’m doing it. Fitting back into my size 8 trousers will be an added benefit… x
I had just tediously started counting calories 7 days a week to lose my baby butt when I read this the other week so decided to make the switch to 5:2. I have lost over a kilo a week and doing it easily (compared to every other diet I have tried). It is early days but so far it has been a revelation.
WOW – I don’t think I’m losing anything like that much. Do you watch what you eat the other days? I’m worried I’ve been tucking into a little too much of Mary Berry’s treacle tart… Do you do loads of exercise? If I haven’t lost tomorrow, I will know I’m doing something wrong.
I go for a run most mornings so that would be helping (but was doing that before anyway). I am letting myself loose on non-fast days (and I have a serious sweet tooth), but the fast days seem to be teaching me not to think about food 24/7 so I don’t tend to eat as much as I used to. Although, there is definitely a big fat slice of cake being consumed 5 days a week, that is for sure!
That’s good to hear!
Maggie,
Some tips. Try not to have the gum or Diet coke water with lemon or spring water good to sip. Go to bed early. Trust me this is imperative.
My kids have all left home and on my down days I make husband cook his own food or have 10 times of what I’m having.
I found that an 1 egg omlette packed with delicious vegtables is a very low calorie meal and you feel like its proper food.
Or making sure that what I eat for my last meal is delicious so its often 100 gm of the best smoked salmon with a little avocado and fresh horseradish.
I also have a green smoothie or a blueberry one for breckie with a bit of protein powder in it.
Here is a link to the USA program which was formulated by an endocronologist.
http://www.johnsonupdaydowndaydiet.com/html/diet-landing.html
To all the doubters this is medically supported. My husbs is a doctor and went to an anti-aging conference a few years ago where they talked of short periods of fasting as being optimal for longevity.
The science in the original docco is of the highest calibre – the man who made it is the BBC’s on staff doctor for medical programmes… So good to hear from someone who understands this isn’t a fad diet, but the most cutting edge research into eating to prevent the diseases of old age. The Dr in the programme was borderline diabetic and had high cholesterol at the start – after 2 months of 5:2 fasting his blood levels for both were ideal. The weight loss was an incidental benefit. Thanks so much for posting x
Good luck Maggie. SO glad to have you back. Please stay! x
I will! I will! I love the freedom of blogging and the chatting after x
Best of luck Maggie… Think I need to get some of those miraculous noodles too. x
They aren’t that nice, but apparently I didn’t rinse them enough….
Dear Maggie,
What a drag!
I don’t know that I could do the fasting bit -
if I don’t eat ‘enough’ find it very hard to think properly, yawn a lot and get very grumpy and then panic as I know all of the above are my low blood sugar signs so I convince myself to eat so I can get on with my day. I (too) am doing the usual our age slow weight gain. My big problem is I eat like a brickie’s labourer in relation to portions and treats (whatever I feel like/cam get my hands on) on top! But I must get my head around it and drop some ks too. Important not to panic.
I don’t know if this is allowed on your current regime – Quinoa?
So satisfying and delicious and apparently a super food. It must be rinsed (too) before cooking to reduce bitterness; hot or cold (salads) delicious!
We are all rooting for you Maggie and wishing you a healthy and happy result. BX
Loved the post Maggie, but may I implore you to read the 4 hour Body by Tim ferriss?
I put on 35kgs (!!!) in pregnancy and could not get most of it off. I was just desperate and depressed.
I read this book and now eat huge portions, do not ‘watch’ what I eat, apart from cutting out the foods you have to and I am the thinnest I have been in my life, size 8. Have maintained it for 3 years and will never put it back on, because I truly get it now. I read your food diary and you are definitely eating the ‘wrong’ things to lose weight, according to Tim!
Anyway. Sorry for the rant. I have no affiliation with Tim ferriss but I do truly understand what it feels like not being able to get weight off and wanted to share my experience.
He has also released a cookbook, the 4 hour chef.
Love the blog. Lucy xxx
Sent from my iPhone
interesting, I will look into it, but the science in favour of fasting is pretty convincing, with health benefits re cancer and dementia as well as the more obvious obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Great to hear your story. I have a very good friend who has achieved the same with Dukan, so there are many ways of doing it, the answer is to find the one that works for you xxx
Dr Mosley had a show recently on SBSTV in Australia about exercise which was really interesting too. He mentions it in this BBC interview along with the diet. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20890613
The fact that the diet also boasts benefits in preventing dementia makes it well worth a try.
Now if he could just find a cure for the curse that is Raynaud’s Syndrome I would be delighted. Any tips you find there, Maggie, I’d love to hear.
I, too, thought you looked just great when in Australia on your book tour recently but I know how quickly the weight creeps back on this time of year. Good luck and I’ll be following your progress with interest.
Thanks Gail… It’s the broad health benefits which caught my interest – dementia, cancer, heart disease. The weight loss is an added benefit on top. Raynaud’s is SUCH a bore. I just invested in a very expensive pair of lambskin gloves which have made a massive difference to me. Now I just need the rosacea cure… xxx
Thanks Maggie. I have so many different types/pairs of gloves. The only ones that work for me are like Ugg boots for your hands. Not good if you need to use your fingers. But then neither is an attack of Raynaud’s. My friend has had success with rosacea. Lots of antibiotics, keeping out of the sun, no coffee, no alcohol. Maybe I’m lucky just to have Raynaud’s!
I hope the fasting is going well. The health benefits certainly have captured my interest too.
Those are exactly the gloves which work for me… I won’t take antibiotics, unless I have a life threatening infection and I won’t give up the other things (we need some vitamin D from sun for bone health) so I just have to live with it. Luckily I have very good make up!
Oh, I love IF, which is how I refer to it so people don’t get all thingy about intermittent fasting. I started doing it back in October, and I find it extremely effective. I need to get back into it. I combine it with a bit of an every day eating thing where I try to cut out the snacks, grog most nights and the late night nibbles. What I eat for my meals is fine, its the in between that kills me. Christmas is over, I’m almost through the school holidays so I need to get back into it. I loved that doco – you can find it in on Youtube here in Australia, and I think there is another fasting book that is available. I was put onto this by a personal trainer, who I just love. So, there you go – full support from me. I actually just cut out everything during my fast days apart from black tea and water with some lemon, and have a small meal at dinner time. I find that works best for me. So, looking forward to updates in a few weeks time!!
This is encouraging, Mary J. I’m trying not to think about any eating restricitions on non-fasting days, just eat what I feel like. I’ll let you know how I go… x
Hi Maggie, when I first read this I thought your were mad, having never heard of this diet. But I began madly googling it and am now half way through day 1. With diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimers all cropping up on my family tree, and a big tummy that just won’t go after having my daughter two years ago, I’m hoping this could will work so well for me that I can convince my parents to try it too. The Miracle noodles tip has been a saviour – I’m just enjoying a yummy soup of chopped carrot, red capsicum, half a pack of Slim noodles (must be the Aust. version, from the local IGA) in a cup of chicken stock, Tbs soy sauce and some chilli powder – very tasty and way more satisfying than miso soup and only a few calories more at 99 calories.I’m getting through the hunger moments with green tea and the thought of how yummy my turkish toast and flat white will taste tomorrow morning. But I still have al looooong afternoon to get through! Can I throw in my two cents worth and say please get rid of the chewing gum and diet soft drink as soon as you can? They actually make you hungrier and will make you want to eat more – may explain why day 2 was harder for you.
I can’t wait to hear more about how it’s working for you. Just out of interest, on your non-fasting days, do you drink alcohol?
Hang in there!
HI Pippa, you are right about the chewie and diet drinks. I know they are totally toxic and yes, the chewie did make me more hungry, so I’m ditching that. Think I will need the diet ginger beer a little longer… I’m glad you looked at the big picture with this diet. I’m going to take the advice of another commentator and get my base line done next week, so I can see if it improves. Let me know how you get on. Re your alcohol question: I don’t drink much, I haven’t for years. If I feel like a G & T, while i’m makind dinner, I’ll have one, but I only drink wine if I go out for dinner now, or if we have friends over, but only a few glasses. I’m really over it as a ‘quaffing’ drink as I just don’t enjoy how it makes me feel. Champagne is another matter though…. very happy to quaff that whenever I get the chance!
I think I am you, just a decade behind- my New Years resolution is no wine at home without guests! It’s so bad for my rosacea and too easy to find yourself with an empty bottle after just a couple of glasses with your husband after a bad day at work. Am now treating myself to a whiskey after the kids are in bed so happy to know I can keep that up with this. Looking forward to hearing how it goes in your next update. I find going to bed hungry is the hardest!
I think wine is not nearly so much our friend as we have all been led to believe… x
[...] s been a lot of press recently on the 5:2 diet, it was brought to my attention by writer Maggie Alderson. I’ve never, ever, ever done a ‘fad’ diet (weight watchers doesn’t count as fad in my eyes) [...]