Hi all,
firstly can i say thank you to those regular posters on here i have been reading the board for the last 8 weeks and it has proved a highly supportive resource while on my journey.

i had started 5:2 again in March having let my weight notch back up to my heaviest at 235lbs, not great….using the the old 5:2 managed to get that down to 226lbs by May

Recently my wife discovered the new 5:2 (fast 800) and we started that, we did four weeks of 800 a day and i dropped almost 15lbs, to help with weekends and meals out for the next four weeks we have been doing 800 a day mon-fri and been less restrictive but still pretty good at the weekend.

At the weekend we are still using the books for recipe ideas unless eating out. i have not to gone back to snacking and certainly not snacking on crisps and chocolate or fizzy drinks. if i do snack its on nuts, a shake or lunchbox bar from the book, although the odd carb item or sugar item is in the mix at the weekend but much more restrained than the old me. After the least four weeks i am another 9lbs down… so 32lbs overall and quite happy with that, targeting a further 28lbs to get down to my 175lbs target, so still some way to go.

This is the first time i am under 209lbs in over well over 15 years so i am slightly dubious about maintaining it.

What i am struggling with at the moment is weekends. i am also probably not drinking enough on the weekend and having the odd treat as mentioned above. what i am finding is i can “put on” 5lbs on the weekend (really i am not eating more than 1400-1600 calories max on those days).

it seems to then take mon-wed to drop that bloating or water retention or whatever it is off to then begin to lose again….. does anyone else have this issue on their non fast day? is this sugar causing the bloating? (god knows it causes me some wind which it never used to) or is this just a lack of water at the weekend causing me to retain?

thanks

Hi Target – firstly, well done on all you have achieved so far. With regard to the increases you experience over the w/e, I think poor hydration is probably a contributing factor, but carbs do hang on to fluid, so if your carb intake is being increased Friday to Sunday, this would account for gains and feeling bloated. Try adjusting your hydration over the w/e’s and take a look at your carb intake too. The extra calories won’t have much impact, but the carbs are not as forgiving.

Hope this helps a little and that we will see you out and about on other threads on the forum. Best wishes going forward …. hope you soon achieve your goal.

Hi 175Target,
Well done in your losses so far, and the work in getting to grips with this way of eating.
When we eat a carb high diet our body has to store water to help it process the carbs. So that accounts for some of the gain. –
This forum covers everything from the BSD, 5:2, and now the Fast800. My personal journey was to start off with reading the BSD in October 2017 and then with the assistance/advice of long term successful members of the forum and reading more about the science behind this WoE I have continued on my journey towards a healthy body composition. The advice in the BSD book is to follow that way of eating for 8 weeks at a time. – While I understand the advice with regard to Fast800 is to follow the program for upto 12 weeks. Which leaves the question of what to do after those periods. –
I would recommend looking at some of the links on the Take a Look at this Thread. In particular there is a podcast by Dr Bikman that I posted a link to back in Jan / Feb 2018 that I think you will find helpful in understanding what is happening. The other resource that people who have discarded large amounts of weight recommend is the “Why we get fat” book by Gary Taubes.
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Your body works to keep your blood sugar levels in the normal range by producing insulin.
The difference between normal and diabetic blood sugar levels is less than 1 teaspoon of sugar dissolved in 4.7 to 5 litres of blood.
Consider insulin as being a switch, when high your body can’t access your fat stores to make up any calorie deficit, so it doesn’t matter how many calories you eat or do not eat, any weight loss will not be fat loss. –
If you eat so many carbs that you trigger an insulin response it can take anything from one to ten days to get back into ketosis (low insulin =/= fat burning mode). So the yo yo pattern of eating differently at weekends will be the cause of problems you are seeing.
Its up to you which path to choose, there are people on the forum who remain addicted to carbs and can not face the idea of eating low carb all week. – There are others who stay low carb all week for months at a time. One of the nice things about this forum is that people can share information on all sorts of different techniques and their progress.

thanks for the advice and encouragement SunnyB and JGwen

i am pretty happy keeping the carbs low at the weekend as well so i think i will go down that route as i didn’t realize the insulin response was 1. so sensitive, 2. took a while to reset.

i hydrated really well yesterday and am back within 0.8lbs of where i was on Saturday am before the weekend change in food so it sounds like the bulk of the gain is as you suggested was water. the question now is how quickly i get back to losing actual weight again.

i am also conscious of once i get to my target the critical thing for me is working out how to stay there, less on the number on the scales but more on the inches round the waist etc as i am ok with the idea of swapping more of the fat for muscle as i get back in shape and that will means scales ticking up

how have you been able to maintain well?

Great that hydrating well has helped. Would advise not worry about what happens once you get to target right now. Focus on what you need to do day to day to get there and when you’re vin hitting distance shout out again and those already in maintenance will off their suggestions, so that you can decide the best approach for you.

All best wishes …

Hi 175Target,
The best person on the forum to talk about successful maintenance is Allie, She followed the BSD style format before she even found out about this forum after reading the Why we get Fat book that you often see recommended on the Forum. – She dropped down to under 20g of carbs a day and 800 calories and stuck at that level for 10 months during which she consistently discarded the weight she wanted to drop. Once she got down to her target weight she increased her levels of carb upto 35g a day, and increased her calories upto around 1500 a day, and has successfully maintained. – She is the biggest discarder who kindly remains on the forum to help show the way to others starting out.
My initial target was to get down to the weight / size I have traditionally been as an adult. I had put on 6.5 stone after an injury which left me in constant pain, and after the pain was resolved I wanted to go back to doing the things in life I enjoy. I have achieved that, and am now down 7 stone since October 2017.
However, I am the first to admit that my traditional size has been overweight, and I have spent decades struggling with yo yo dieting to try to control it. It feels so liberating to have discovered the science so that I can achieve the healthy body composition that I have always wanted. I don’t know what my final weight will be, it would be nice to get down another stone and a half, because in my case I would like to go on riding holidays in other countries and a number of them have weight limits.
If was not for that then the reading on the scale is just that, a reading on a scale that the only person who sees it is me in the privacy of the bathroom and has no other impact. – A healthy body composition on the other hand enables me to live my life to the full for as long as possible.

thanks JGwen i will look up Allie once i hit my initial target.

that’s one heck of an achievement 7 stone down…amazing congrats and well done.

i would agree with what you said regarding healthy weight and body composition.

i am a 5′ 10″ male, 38 yo, broad shoulders and i have been overweight since the age of 11, my frame had always hidden it quite well where people are surprised at how much i need to lose started at 16 st 10lbs and according to BMI which i dont really like as a metric the healthy weight (top of the band) is 12 st 7lbs for me hence the 175 target.
That said other than the 175 mile stone my ultimate goal is fitness and health to give me longevity in the same way you mentioned so the number on the scales is simply the initial measure for me. then it will be about lowering the fat % and increasing the lean muscle mass a touch and maintaining not only that but the health markers.

i think when i look at the meals as we begin to plan for next week i will pay closer attention to the carb level, does anyone know the carb level in the banana lunchbox bars from the little Fast 800 book, they are very useful breakfast food but the book doesn’t say.

Cheers

175T

I was so interested to read your post because exactly the same happens to me. This weekend I had 1.5 days off plan, but not outrageously apart from a curry and put on 3lb. I believe that to put on 1lb needs an extra 3500 calories and so to put on 3lb I would have had to have eaten 10500 calories plus the 2000 to maintain! Much as I would have loved to work my way through that lot, I didn’t, nowhere near in fact and it has taken me until today to lose 2lb of that. It’s very disheartening that it takes a week to lose 3lb generally and a day to put it back on! We are heading to Florida in October and I am dreading to think what the scales will say when we get back! I have been doing the fast 800 for about 5 weeks and lost 14lb, about halfway to my target.

It’s normal to put back on water weight once we eat carbs again. And not a small amount either. Once you reintroduce carbs you can gain 6-10 lbs of water…

Hi 175Target, As a vegetarian there were so few recipes in the BSD book that I could follow that I didn’t bother. – Initially I cut out all the “big white” carbs, sugar, bread, pastry, rice, pasta, chocolate etc then I moved on to using the fatsecret app to log everything I was thinking about eating and work out the carbs in them.

I find that using an app on my mobile phone is the easiest way to have flexibility in my eating patterns, it breaks the link with eating only what is planned in advance. – I know that one of the criticisms of the BSD book is that the calories are out in the recipes so I don’t think I would have trusted that the carbs would be accurate if they had been provided.

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Hi Maisiebeth. Each litre of water we drink weighs a kg. – So if you are following the advice to drink a couple of litres of water a day your weight will fluctuate upto 2 kg (4.4lbs) over the course of a day depending where you are on the cycle of water in / out. – Then there is the difference in the weight of the food you have eaten in your digestive system. 800 calories of cheese weighs a lot less than 800 calories of celery. 🙂 This is why its more important to monitor trends in weight than taking the reading on the scale for that day as gospel.

There are a couple of reasons our weight increases if we eat carbs. – Some of the carbs we eat will be stored as glycogen in our muscles as energy. – for each g of glycogen our body needs to store 2 to 3 g of water. The other reason is changes in the level of salt intake, a carb high diet tends to be high in salt which causes fluid retention. However, then as we burn glycogen and release water our kidneys release electrolytes with the water so the pendulum quickly swings to needing to supplement salt to prevent cramps.

Thank you JGwen. There is so much science to this WOE and it is fascinating and a little daunting at the same time. Having been basically brought up on Slimming World the difference is taking a while to get my head around, but I am losing a lot more weight than I ever did on SW and feeling more determined and energetic despite eating a lot less. For the first time in forever I am confident that this is going to work!

i am a bit disheartened, have been unable to lose for three weeks now. not sue why. last weekend was a scorcher in the UK and i clearly didnt drink enough as i was up 8lbs which has now all but gone away but its cost me another week.

have been super good all week, carbs are under 50 some days under 30g and i have been able to lose at 50-60 up until now. i dont think i can do lower carbs so would rather not try that.

we are going back to two weeks of 800 a day to try and boost things back up

any ideas team?

Aw @175target I have been in your shoes and I understand the disheartenment… You can check my post history and see that I have been through the exact same issue on week 3/4 of this WOE.
Let’s try and trouble shot :
Do you track your calories and macros (ie how much fat, proteins, carbs) you’re eating? Carbs seem at the right level, so it’d be great to see your other metrics.
Do you tape measure yourself? Any change in that department?
Def keep your water intake UP. It’s counter intuitive but when not drinking enough water, your body retain as much as it can – especially on hot days.

Hi Louise

Thanks for the reply. Yes I do track the other macros

On the tape measure thanks for reminding me to check. The only thing that’s moved is about an inch off my chest everything else is the same see below

18 August waist 40.5 chest 42 top of thigh 25 hips 40.5 bp 118/78 14.7.4

31 August waist 40.5 chest 41 top of thigh 25 hips 40.5 bp 118/78 14.8.0

Protein between 45-90g am worried this is light to maintain muscle

Fat between 40-50g

Fibre between 6-15g

Hi 175Target.
First of all trying to measure progress via the scales always adds stress because our weight fluctuates for so many reasons.
We are all encouraged to drink 2ltr of water a day, each ltr weighs 1kg. So depending on where you are in that days cycle of water in <> out your weight will fluctuate by 4.4 lbs.
Then there is the weight in your digestive system which changes depending on what you have eaten and how long it stays in your digestive system. 800 calories of cheese weighs a lot less than 800 calories of celery.
Finally as we get our carb intake down, so we reduce the Insulin spikes our other hormone systems can work as they should. This includes the growth hormone responsible for body repair, which signals your body to build stronger bones and muscles. – All of which will result in better body composition.

Its good that you are taking measurements at certain points on your body, and you have seen the changes there, but our bodies are fickle things, they change shape in all sorts of places that we wouldn’t expect before discarding fat from where we want. Many people on the forum report dropping a shoe size, and having collar bones emerge before they started to see any change in their chest, waist, hips, thigh areas.

If you look back on the forum you will see discussions between myself and 6Turkeys on how the texture of our skin changes prior to a drop in inches. – I get dimples forming, which increase until they look like invisible thumbs pressing into my skin and then the dimples disappear and inch loss has occurred.

So take the time to look at yourself in a mirror to look for changes.
———————————-
My first recommendation would be to lower carbs, the experience of many including myself is that we have such high background levels of Insulin at the start that we need to be under 20g of carbs to get into fat burning mode. – However, if that is not for you then I would suggest looking at adding time restricted eating, or fasting into the mix.
I would also suggest reading about autophagy, to help put your mind at rest about your protein levels.
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I have been on this Way of Eating for nearly 2 years now, I have so far discarded 7 stone, and along the way there have been regular periods of flat lining with changes on the scales and I got stressed by those. – The solution for me has been over time a change in my way of thinking. Back in those days I still thought of this as being a diet and the focus was on getting my weight down to my target and then I wanted to get back to eating carbs.
The key for me has been to think of this whole process as learning how our bodies use carbs, fat and protein. – From that how to tweak what I eat to encourage my body to use up my fat stores, with a view to in the long term giving my body the best fuel I can. Right now I am eating in a way to allow my body to heal, which is something it wants to do, but will take the time it takes and will do it in the order it wants.

thanks for the replies

JGwen some helpful suggestions in there, we already do TRE i try to stick to 930am-830pm or ideally 10am-8pm

at present we are still fasting we were doing 800 cals mon-fri and about 1200-1400 on the weekend but not really counting at the weekend as such.

the next two weeks we are going back to 800 cals a day for 14 days to see if that helps, for week two of that i will try your suggestion of carb reduction down from 50g to around 20g see if that help

i will also look up Autophagy

i agree this is a lifestyle change not just a diet (the 800 cals bit is the diet piece for me) we need to understand how we transition to maintenance but as you guys advised me i need to get to my target first lol