HI I only hve around 5kg to lose and am not diabetic. My big girl nearly 2 still has a breastfeed at night too (!!) ok if that stops though.

Would I be best on 5/2 or med style?

If I try 5/2 for awhile what macros should I am for in terms f fat, protein and carbs? Can someone recommend?

I do have PCOS so this style of eating is good for me.

I definitely think Med style would be best in your situation. Try to look at it like a flexible diet, just keep to the Mediterranean style foods. Set your protein requirement first. 1g of protein per pound of body weight is usually recommended. Multiply this by four to get calories. Then work out your TDEE. Subtract the protein calories from this which will leave you with a calorie figure for fats and carbs. Split this 60:40 fats and carbs, then divide the fat calories by 9 and the carb calories by 4 to get grams of these two. This will give you your targets and individual macros. From this you can drop carbs further if you are comfortable doing so and increase fat correspondingly, if the weight doesn’t move.

Thank you that is a very detailed reply!

Bear with me, I’m an Aussie so I need to do this in pounds.

I haven’t weighed myself in awhile, better right that but I would say with the extra over Christmas I weigh 67kg (that is 147 pounds).

So 1g protein per pound of body weight is 147g? 588 calories from protein (not sure if I am following correctly here).

If I run with 30 mins exercise x 3 a week, I want this to be more but with out of house 11 hours a day for work and housework and baby it is hard (my husband goes out to the gym every morning so I can’t go 🙁 I want to do more at home though and am working it in slowly). Interestingly just before I fell pregnant with baby and exercised every day, I weighed more than I do now!

I’ve used an online calculator with a desk job and exercise above which gives me TDEE 1691, I don’t know my muscle mass.
If I want to lose weight I think starting on 1200 as a deficit is reasonable, it is about as low as a standard weight loss plan.

SO 1200-588 (protein) gives me 612 left over. That is 368 for fat (60%) and 244 cals for carbs?

Which would be.. 147 grams protein, 40 (well, 41 for fat) in grams and 61 for carbs?

Ha ha that was overly complex and probably overthinking it but its a bit of fun! Curious to see if it works!
How did I do? Is that right?

That’s about a 50 (protein), 30 (fat) 20 (carbs) percentage split.. what do you think? YOu seem to know about this stuff.
I would also be interested to here from Michael, Clare and any others on what they think would be appropriate in my situation. I do suffer from visceral fat around the tummy due to PCOS.

Hi Leksie, I am no expert, but that looks about right. Maybe initially you should drop the protein a bit if you are not exercising that heavily, if you have more than you need it can get converted to blood sugar/fat and increase the healthy fats intake slightly instead, which will support the weightloss. I usually look at around 40% fat calories, but my TDEE is slightly higher. You can also do intermittent fasting such as 16:8, where you don’t eat until 12 pm for example, and don’t eat anything after 8 pm, to give yourself a 16 hour fast until eating at 12 pm again the next day. This is supposed to be very helpful at removing visceral fat deposits as well. Good luck with your eating plan, and keep posting here if you have any questions or observations, we will be glad to help.

THanks, yeah I did consider the protein could be a little high depending on what exercise I end up being able to incorporate. I do try and get to gym and will be trying for strength 3 times a week but it doesn’t always happen. I will see how I go and maintain this thread as a record of my progress! It is hard to get our head around because it goes against all we have been told (never have gaps between food or metabolism will slow). We are all so overfed these days though I’m not sure that advice still applies..