Lessons Learned After Five Months of 5-2 Fasting

When I last left off my weight maintenance tale, I was not holding my weight loss at all. I had hit the dreaded plateau and worse still, was inching right back up the scale to where I started! I got to just 1.5 pounds below my starting weight and decided it was time to try something new.

I began The Fast Diet two days per week. My fast days were (and are) Sundays and Wednesdays. I wasn’t too worried about the hunger aspect because I had already been through the hunger drama during my 40-day experiment that spring when I was eating 1200 calories per day. I already knew what sugar-shakes were like, could learn to live with a gnawing sensation in my stomach and would power through the lack of energy I would have for my exercise routines. It is never fun to start any kind of diet but I kept telling myself, “It’s just one day. How bad can it be?”

The First Fast

The first fast day came. I kept myself busy until dinnertime. I was already familiar with the constraints of a 400 calorie meal from my previous salad experiments so I decided to go with a 400 calorie salad and a can of V8 juice for my fasting meals. When you are really hungry, it is nice to have a full plate of food to eat and the only way to do that (that I have found) is to have a huge bowl of green salad. Going with the salad also made it easy to adjust the meals to serve my husband (whom I had asked to try this experiment with me). I found it was easy to make the same salad and just add 100 calories of cheese to his rather than having to make two completely separate calorie-appropriate meals.

So far so good. By evening, I was feeling a bit hungry but went to bed.

The next morning, I awoke so ravenously hungry and feeling like if I didn’t eat something right then I would collapse! I jumped out of bed and treated myself to a huge breakfast. In the end, I am sure I ate more than what I should have eaten that day and probably more than made up for my fasting in calorie intake.

Continuing the Fast

I tried it again the next fasting day. It was generally the same procedure. By the end of the first week on the fasting routine, I had dropped 4 pounds! I continued the pattern of fasting 2 days and eating regularly 5.

The Fasting Injury

When I was first fasting, I learned that I had to be extremely careful in the mornings after fast days until about an hour after breakfast . In my hungry state, my brain and my reflexes were stressed and not quite up to their regular capabilities. If I were doing something like operating heavy machinery, performing microsurgery or anything that could endanger someone’s life if I were distracted, I would be extremely careful about fasting when you first get started.

My first injury came when I tried to chop frozen strawberries for a breakfast smoothie after fasting. This was a big mistake! The strawberries were rolling around and I had to be careful to hold them in place as I used the knife. I slipped a bit on my grip and the next thing I knew I had sliced right into the top of my thumb!

I was afraid to look at first. Eventually, after the shock had passed, I surveyed the damage. Fortunately, I did not need stitches. It was just a bad slice that would heal in a few weeks time.

Building the Fasting Muscle

Fasting is not a “natural” behavior. I learned that getting used to fasting is much like building muscle and stamina in exercise. It takes time to get used to not eating. It is both a physical and a psychological exercise. Gradually, after about two months of fasting, it became easier to not eat during fast days and the frantic feeling before breakfast after fast days started to go away as well.

The Non-Fast Day Trap

The biggest complaint you will hear about fasting from nutritionists is that fasting encourages a schizophrenic eating pattern, where what you eat on the non-fasting days is often so caloric that you more than make up for what calories you missed on fast days.

In my experience this is definitely true. I found that by the end of most fast days I ended up baking high carb treats to consume the next day.

In The Fast Diet book, the authors claim that after fasting for a while they craved sugars less and less and even looked forward to their fasting days because it gave them energy. I have not experienced anything like this yet! I still crave sugar like a monster. I don’t look forward to fast days per se but I have gotten to the point where my body will give me signals like “It’s a good thing tomorrow is a fast day because you definitely overdid it today.”

Weight Loss?

So, the big question is, how did fasting work as a weight loss tool? At first, I have to say the results were horrible! I would lose a bunch of weight on fast days then gain it all right back on non-fast days. (Note that if you have better discipline than I do and you can maintain a healthy diet on your non-fasting days, you might have far better and more consistent results.) It was the epitome of yo-yo-dieting. But after I had been fasting for a couple of weeks, I put my weights on a chart and noticed this curious pattern.

My weight was yo-yo-ing up and down but there was a general downward trend! Fasting seemed to be working!

The Holidays Hit

I have continued fasting two days per week. Perhaps I have hit the dreaded 4-6 month plateau or perhaps the stress and food of the holidays have all caught up with me but I am sorry to report that my fasting weight loss trend has not been sustainable.

As you can see from my chart, my weight has steadily increased from Thanksgiving through Christmas. I had a small downward trend from there but am bouncing up and down yet again. It is certainly a frustrating experience.

Why I am Sticking with Fasting Anyway

So, fasting literally has its ups and downs, but I am choosing to stick with it anyway. Why? A couple of key reasons:

1) It allows me to make an effort at dieting without completely transforming my life. I am not ready yet to make a dramatic life change like cutting out sugar completely or following some strict diet. I have small children to raise and other priorities that would make such a change very difficult for me right now. I am sure this change will probably have to come at some point but for now fasting allows me to take one small step in this direction. Two days a week, I am eating very healthy, low-sugar foods and plenty of vegetables. There are still five days that I am not but I will gladly take two days over nothing.

2) Every single fast day I am gaining psychological insight about my eating patterns. Dieting seems to me to be a 90% mental exercise. Biologically, there is no reason why we need to eat every day but undeniably we crave food. When I am “forbidden” from eating for a day, I can’t grab a snack to power through some stressful event. Instead, I am left alone to calm my brain myself. I have had to learn how to entertain myself without food, how to socialize with others without eating and how to find hidden reserves of energy to exercise or play with my children when I am calorie deprived. It is definitely hard but not impossible by any means.

3) It is cheap and quick. Parents of small children especially don’t want a diet plan that requires a lot of time. The fasting answer is the quickest there is: don’t cook, don’t wash dishes . . . just don’t eat! It also doesn’t cost anything. I have learned that I am one of the biggest and most expensive eaters in my house. When I fast, I can see the savings on our grocery bill.

So, at this point in my weight maintenance journey, I know it is time to try something else to get my weight headed back in the right direction. I think my next step will be to try to stop eating after 6:00 p.m. each day on my non-fast days and see what happens from there.

My journey so far has taught me to be very respectful of how complex the weight loss process is and how much it can vary from person to person. It has also taught me that is unrealistic to expect that you can develop one new diet and exercise routine and have that serve you perfectly forever. You have to be ready to change things up continuously as your body changes and adapts. Having a mindset oriented toward learning and experimentation is one of the best weight loss tools out there.

In my next post, I will share with you the medical analysis from my doctors on my weight loss and weight maintenance efforts so far.

*I am not affiliated with The Fast Diet or Dr. Michael Mosley.