Introduction the 5:2 diet

I have been using intermittent fasting for health and weight loss since I watch a BBC documentary in August 2012.  Initially I was using alternate day fasting - and lost no weight.  I then switched to the 5/2 pattern of eating, with two fasting days (where I eat no more than 500 calories) and five days where I eat what I want.  After years of gradually putting on weight, I have now lost two stone.

I feel as enthusiastic about this way of dieting as I did at the beginning of my journey.  I love the fact that I only ever have to think about one day of dieting.  I appreciate my food much more.  I have found that it has liberated me from feeling guilty about eating anything at all because I am fat - and from feeling that I have no willpower.  Two days a week I have extreme willpower and stick to a diet of 500 calories only.  And I have done for months.

I had one period when I didn't continue - I was ill with flu after Christmas.  I didn't feel like eating at all for the first week, but I went back to eating normally gradually.  On every other diet I have tried, as soon as I stopped I piled on a lot of the lost weight - sometimes as much as eight or nine pounds in a week.  On the intermittent fasting diet there was no such effect.

My weight loss has been steady, I taste and appreciate my food more, I have stopped feeling guilty about food.  I am losing weight.  I have become a walking advertisement for the diet for weight loss.  But there is more.  The BBC programme showed that this way of eating has benefits in lowered blood pressure, lowered cholesterol and a whole range of markers.  I think that's why I find it easy to stick to the diet... I believe it is doing me good.  I've learned that I can be hungry, not eat, and be ok.  I wanted a place to put all the information about intermittent fasting.  And here it is.  Welcome!