Weight / Fat loss

84kg

Lost 3kg in the last 10 days or so

Buddhist monk diet?

Fire walk with me

Since mid January, I've been trying to cut out crap and eat properly. I've been back to training properly and while I'm still rather heavy, I've definitely leaned out. This is pleasant because previously it's taken silly dieting to lean out and I feel I'm finally managing something sustainable!

i watched the horizon doco about 5:2, i'm interested to try it.

Just watched this also, very interesting. Shame about the naval-gazing interludes, however brief they were.

I thought intermittent fasting was just a weight loss strategy - didn't realize it's also meant to be really good for you!

My digi scales are on the blink, I tend to weigh myself most mornings and the swings are unfeasable. Are those electro ones that theoretically measure BMI any good? Recommendations? Ta

Your weight will swing a kilo or so here and there easily. I have withings scale which works pretty well but whether I've taken a shit or not can make half a kilo difference apparently.

Tanita scales are good

Take the body fat % as a guide rather than fact. It shows trends in lardiness, and can vary by a few % a day depending on hydration etc.

One of the best things I did for weight loss is to get a set of scales for the office. Bloody hell blokes are competitive.

Sometimes I weigh myself before and after a shit. Interesting. Record is 800g.

Since mid January, I've been trying to cut out crap and eat properly. I've been back to training properly and while I'm still rather heavy, I've definitely leaned out. This is pleasant because previously it's taken silly dieting to lean out and I feel I'm finally managing something sustainable!

Has no one told you?

Don't lean.

I cant see the 5:2 diet working for someone who is properly active, I try to eat net 1300 calories a day, which seems low but my life other than exercise is extremely sedentary I went through the faff of working out my energy expenditure about a year ago and it was about 1500 a day. in reality I tend to burn about 1500 calories every day in training.

If I tried to consume 500 calories I would be suffering from severe hypoglyceamia at worst or just doing really shit pointless training all the time at best.

During January I deliberately dropped my training intensity in January, to help me break out of the cycle of having a calorie defecit and filling that gap by making bad food choices. training volumes have increased back up again this week and so far (touch wood) the better habits I've got into over January of having much larger healthy meals, and a desk drawer full of healthy snacks like nuts, rice cakes, and nakd bars.

That's not to say I'm not eating some crap and having the occasional beer, or eating too much but the overall trend is good and is creating some steady improvement.

So doing this.

Day three of protein and husk diet... epic ghosties though I am cranky as fuck

Sometimes I weigh myself before and after a shit. Interesting. Record is 800g.

We had a "log book" for such things (shared house at Uni many years ago)

Check the bowl for your intestines.

I just bought the book 'Racing weight' as well. I'm hoping it will help me to structure my scoffing better.

I'm 6'4" and 95kg not a brick shit house at all in fact still rather slim, however...I have developed a paunch! which I gather on an otherwise slender chap may well be the dreaded 'viscous fat'.
Also I am vain and my tricots do not look nice with a bulge.

this is what i wasn't sure about.
in the horizon docu the presenter initally tried a 3 day total fast but found the health benefits wore off after a couple of months so it would have to be repeated.
maybe thats a better option for me than 5:2 as i want to train on the bike.
*i'm intersted in the health benefits as stated in horizon as well as the weight loss.

Always do!

That's the kind of self-sufficiency that will get you through the RTD.

I cant see the 5:2 diet working for someone who is properly active

It's not supposed to. Mosley developed it as something that worked for him, a middle-aged, not very active individual. He didn't intend it to be a nutrition system for an active athlete who is concerned about their performance.

In any case if you did do it, you wouldn't be consuming 500 calories anyway - 500 for women and 600 for men isn't a scientific value, it's just a number Mosley pulled out of his arse as it wasn't too strenuous for a middle-aged, not very active individual. Going by average numbers, 500-600 calories is about 25% of your average man-in-the-street's calorie use per day, assuming you normally eat the usual "average" amount of 2000-2200 a day. If your daily expenditure is normally higher than that, then 500 calories is going to be less than 25%, and yes, you're going to miss it more.

But more pertinently is why would anyone choose to do a bunch of hard training sessions while fasting? There's 7 days in a week, and if somebody can't find a day within those 7 days in which they're not training hard, then they've got no business viciously restricting calories on such intense training schedules. Paula Radcliffe doesn't wake up on the morning of the London Marathon and go "I know! I'll feel fucking great if I deliberately don't eat anything today!" No. If you're working hard, then you need to eat. Conversely, if you're not working hard then you can choose not to.

Hippo's posted in this very thread about doing it successfully and he's a world champ! He probably works harder per year than every one of us put together (gabes excluded) and he's not dead yet. He did also say that it's "strictly an off-season" thing.

Woah there. afaik Michael Mosley didn't invent the 5:2, but just popularised it.
Here's a similar sounding diet plan from 1946:
http://www.citeulike.org/group/3530/article/2290627

Yeah, true. I mean his version of it which is where the 500/600 comes from, as I understand - it's what he decided to go with because the other versions (eating nothing, alternate day fasts etc) in his opinion were too difficult to do around living and having a job and so on. So what's been popularised is something that's actually pretty easy for most people to achieve, so long as they're not working athletes. Which most people are not.

Easy tiger, i was responding to someone asking if they had tried it...

I have no intention of trying it for exactly the reasons you listed above, and suggested that a slightly calorie restricted diet is more suitable for more active people.

To clarify, I only ever do an odd fast day per week (I've never done 5:2).

I haven't done one for a while now as I'm getting back into the swing of things cycling-wise and as you say it's silly trying to fast AND train. Sure, calorie restriction is necessary to lose weight but when training it should be 200-500 calorie under what you use per day. More than that and you'll start to catabolise your wuvly muscles.