Hi everyone,
I’ve never been able to glean an answer to this one. Once the initial Fast800 is over and one switches to the 5:2, I’m curious to know what might be the value of at some point making it 2:5 instead, so you do the 800 all week and have the weekends off (sensibly). Has anyone tried this? It sounds in theory to be hugely beneficial but I just wondered if there’s tricky science in there somewhere?
Hi Simon,
Either will work, there is no formula to follow. You can evaluate for yourself as you go forward — try out both ways and see what works best for you and your eating/exercise schedule. You may find, as did I, that you have learned how to eat for your body type and therefore you don’t need to do 5:2 — just keep an eye on things and cut back as necessary if you start to gain.
I have become far less concerned about calories now, mostly focusing on restricting carbs and sugars. When I control carbs/sugars, the calories seem to take care of themselves and allows me to eat enough protein and other good food to meet my energy needs.
Check out Dr. Benjamin Bikman (just Google his name) for videos on this — he talks a lot about this. His videos have been extremely helpful for me.
Hi Simon,
From what I understand the BSD encompasses all variants of intermittent fasting, including restricted time eating windows and even pure low carb Mediterranean diet with no counting/weighing. I used all these variants on my first go as I initially had such a huge amount of weight to lose. I used 6:1, 5:2, 4:3, 3:4, 2:5, and 1:6 as well as sticking to one round of 8 weeks at 800 calories at various times (and occasionally more stringent fasts for health rather than weight loss) and tried to stick as closely to BSD principles as I could on days off. I am currently doing a hundred days challenge on this forum which is currently 2:5 800/1600 (ending Christmas Eve so there will be some days off). If my weight loss stops or slows so I look like I could miss my target I may throw in a full 800 calorie couple of weeks after my 8 weeks at 2:5, or drop the 2 days to 1400 calories. It may not quite be the fast 800 but it is certainly working so far. I find the flexibility of this WOE to be its strong point so do whatever your body tells you it needs.
Thank you. My hesitation is that I figured that the weekend would kick me out of keto sis and it would then be quite a chunk of the next week before I’m back in it again – but it might not be quite as simple as that?
Try it for yourself and see what happens. A huge part of this new way of eating is figuring out exactly what YOUR body needs.
I’ve never been one to track ketosis, so I am not sure if it takes ages to get back in or not. As long as you keep the carbs down and don’t overdo the protein levels then I would have thought that ketosis would be unaffected even if calories are increased. Use one of the online calculators to work out approximately how much protein is required to maintain your health and musculature level (I did this ages ago and work on around 55-75g depending on my level of activity per day, I am not sure which calculator I used, but just used a search at the time). Try and have the same amount on 800 days and days off. You do get used to portion sizes so don’t have to weigh forever. If your protein is higher than the amount your body can use it could effectively act as additional carbs which may kick you out of ketosis. If you have set an 800 carb limit you may find you have to increase that to get sufficient vegetables and fruit on a ‘day off’, so I use 40g for 800 days and 60g to 70g for days off. This isn’t exact, rather it is an average, and if a day off does work out at lower than that no problem. Keep eating plenty of those healthy fats. Good luck! As always, your body is the important one so if anything makes it feel that you have tried something that hasn’t worked, just reset and try again.