swizzly

How's the concussion doing? Head injuries are sketchy as hell, I hope that you are getting medical care too. The body armor and single-meal days also sound pretty hellish, woman. Man. Don't fret about the Quest bar carbs -- they are almost entirely from prebiotic fibre, which is great for your gut microbia. I ate metric tonnes of Quest bars during my losing phase and they were awesome. Plus, you definitely need the nutrition and calories right now!! Take care of you, hun. :wub:

Okay, so I did a bit of quick converting and it appears my fitbit is having me do 5 miles a day minimum, so if I did that every day (no reason to think I won't, I'm not doing anything extraordinary to reach that now), I would have 150 miles by end of September, right? (I suck at math LOL...) So here's hoping I don't turn my ankle or anything!!

Oh crap, Globey!!! I saw that post but totally didn't catch that it was an ACTUAL attack -- I thought you meant you had a tummy "attack" that resulted in diarrhea, thought the Google thing was about whatever your health problem is!! OMG, I can't believe ATTACKED as in ATTACKED!! Now I'm freaking out...! Are you okay?? That is effing SCARY as s**t. {{{{{{{{{{MANY MANY HUGS}}}}}}}}}} I'm sorry I misunderstood and seemed like I didn't care, cos I DO. I just didn't even twig the first time I read that. Let us know how you're doing, sweets. Will you get some help with working through it at all? PS: What is FOB?

Hey, I'll do this one too! (Oh crap, just remembered I will be on hols 2nd half of September...well, I will join in as much as I can!) I got fitbit and lurrrrrve it muchly. I will be walking, ellipticaling and rebounding my way to 100mi. Between 1-2 sept, I've already done 13k (I will convert to miles when not on phone lol). Woot, yay for btb's tt!! :-)

So I've been doing the 5:2 with you all for some time now...fully three months at least. During that time, several things were happening that I was sort of choosing not to notice or not connecting to each other. I have been madly reading all fasting links that FYE and everyone else was posting, and I eventually came across this one... http://www.marksdailyapple.com/women-and-intermittent-fasting/#axzz2diloZOGk Which led to this one... http://www.paleoforwomen.com/shattering-the-myth-of-fasting-for-women-a-review-of-female-specific-responses-to-fasting-in-the-literature/ And I went...well, wow. My hair started falling out again just a few weeks ago, I've been madly gulping supplements to try and stop that. I've been sleeping badly. I've been on high anxiety (and then drinking as a way to deal with that, so then my calories go up...), etc. I'm perimenopausal, post-hysterectomy with functioning ovaries, so it's hard to say what my period would be up to. But I've definitely felt..different doing 5:2 than I had felt just watching what I ate (and this includes my revised paleo approach, which still seems to work fine for me). And if I'm totally honest, the 5:2 thing is a major trigger for my anorexic self, always in there just waiting to be obsessive about NOT eating, so I've had to watch that anyhow. So now I'm going to do as the second article suggests and listen to my body for a while. I think I will initially do a sort of "revised" 5:2, in which I'll do low-cal (relative to my normal levels) and see how it goes. Right now I'm thinking 700-800 calorie days twice a week still, but I'm totally open to suggestions from this awesome group of people. I will still skip Breakfast cos I'm anyhow not a morning eater, but I will eat a more substantial lunch and possibly a late-afternoon snack, as that is when I really start to have high anxiety. I don't think it's just that I want to eat emotionally to soothe anxiety (I'm not much of an emotional eater anyhow, more an emotional drinker...oy); rather that the non-eating is causing the anxiety and I just need to have something to feel better. The data are super thin and not convincing, but somehow that article hit me hard. I felt like...OOooohhh, THAT is what's been going on. So I'm going to experiment with a revised approach, happy to tell you all how it goes. I hope you will let me stick around even though I'm not strictly following 5:2 per se for a while... Besides all that? I haven't really lost any weight, I'm becoming pretty convinced it might just be cos my body is happy where it's at. And I am fine where it's at as well, I wear a 6 or 8 trousers anyhow -- I just had this weird idea that I wanted to weigh 65kg...but maybe 70-ish is more where I belong? I really don't know...I don't have any answers, just a lot of questions right now. Welcome anyone's thoughts on this of course! And will keep reading about how you all are doing, as it seems to be working marvelously for most. xox

I'm sort of in love with not explaining things to people who don't have a need to know, and just with not telling personal info of any kind. So I'm not a tell-er in general LOL. No regrets on that one.

I really believe you just overtaxed yourself so much that your body demanded some easily accessible calories NOW. Remember maybe to eat as you go so you don't get too hungry especially in the context of high-energy burn? And don't kick yourself when you're down -- doing it once every now and then is not going over the cliff. Cos EVERYONE binges every now and then, even non-bingers and normal weight people!! HUGS

I think a wee bit of ignorance turned out to be bliss in my case, which is often true for me lol. I have awesome medical care, but I was never given a goal weight and was also never told how much I should expect to lose etc. Part of that may have been down to language barriers? But I am glad in some ways that I didn't know about the stuff that's come up now a couple years later, cos in the meantime I lost 100 lb cos that's what I thought I'd lose and I didn't think anything of it. I only started with all this reading and 5:2ing etc cos of going gluten free actually! But I'm so glad I did! I can see that regain is completely possible and I'm just not having it.

Spelt is still very popular here, available in all sorts of bread, crackers, pretzels, etc. I used to love its nutty deliciousness and much lower glycemic index numbers!! However, I feel compelled to add that it is NOT gluten-free for anyone who is Celiac or gluten-intolerant.

Ice slice sounds like a Napoleon or a German Cremeschnitte. Yum! I love anything with custard in or on... And I'm hungry cos it's a fasting day LOL. I just learned that this country is third, after Japan and South Korea, for having the lowest obesity rates in the world. No wonder I still feel big around here!! There are just loads and loads of wee sporty people here, who eat a lot of fat and carbs! Damn them...

It's the 3 am zone for me, so I'm sure anything I'm actually feeling is in overdrive from that wee hours emotional exaggeration thing. It's what sucks the worst about insomnia sometimes. But I will say I'm often chasing my own shadows too and haunted by things from the past. And yet... I don't know if its age or just too many miles on this heart, but I gained a huge amount if compassion for myself a few years back and it seems to have stuck. Even when I'm worried or feeling bad about myself, I refuse to be the first in line to kick myself when I'm down. Thank god for that cos historically I've been bloody awful to myself. I do want to knuckle down and get my food and drink back under control, but that's ok. It's doable and I'll do it. And the times I don't do not define me anymore than 'eating clean' does. At the end of the day, I want to take care of myself and eat good food to nourish me physically and live a good life to nourish ME. I'm mostly doing ok. And when I see you guys being hard on yourselves, I mostly want you to skip to the part where you realize life is short, and precious, and not 'burn daylight' by hating your every thought, feeling and action. I believe we all hopefully get there eventually, by age or by sheer bloody exhaustion with the whole thing. But damn. I wish I could've got there sooner and enjoyed the ride longer. And I wish the same for you guys...to see that you are awesome and GOOD and accept that for the truth it is. Compassion for ourselves is, I think, the key to breaking through the barriers we've got and the bad scripts in our heads and hearts. For me it came before the sleeve, but it could've taken much longer if not for some very hard times, so when things are so bad and painful, think of the possibility of good old growing pains and hang on for what beauty comes of it all... Meantime, I still haven't lost any weight from 5:2...lol. Kinda makes me smile and just figure life is crazy and so is weight loss and dieting...but it's also kind of fun and compelling and life-affirming. We are still here, eating and watching what we eat and thinking how tomorrow is another day. It is ALL a gift. <3

Hiya Tanya -- your post made me smile. You will be rocking that look in no time! I started out at about 240lb and I hit a size 8 initially at about 160lb (I'm like 5' 6.5" tall). I am nearer 150lb now, but still mostly wear an 8 or a 6 in trousers (I consistently wear a 10 in dresses cos I'm built like an American football player in the shoulders/chest LOL).

I had to give up Quest bars, too! They are sooooooo yummy, but the fibre in them was too much. Was killing my digestive system. And yeah, I could eat 2 of them a day easily...

Yeah, I don't eat any grains -- and we don't use oats cos unless you buy the special ones, they can have gluten cross-contamination (my husband is SUPER gluten sensitive), plus I don't like the amount of carbs. When I did eat oats, I did make them with protein powder and milk (full fat) to make them less carby and more fatty and protein-y. Effing scale. This morning? Right back to 71. Hmph.

Yes, I've missed the "Gonna get to goal" thread too!!

I had a weird eating week, mostly down to the birthday I guess. My two 'fast' days ended up higher than normal, Monday was 983 and Weds was 1019, so still low but not fasting-level low. My feeding days were all around the 1800-2000 range. I felt really hungry on my fasting days, which isn't normally a huge problem, but this time it felt like I HAD to eat more, rather than just WANTED to. It was odd. I never know when my cycle is, cos I don't have a uterus anymore LOL...but I am guessing I was hormonal a bit this week, esp since I wasn't as even-tempered as I normally am. Given all of that, I have seen a 3kg swing range the past couple of weeks. I even had a day where my weight was 68, but back up to 70 the next day. Bizzarro world. My body seems to super dig the 70kg number... I got a Fitbit and it's awesome, btw. It tracks my actual activity level -- so now I know that my walking really IS an 'exercise' LOL, cos I'm getting in 10k steps at least every day, about 8-9 km distance in total, and I burn 2184 cals a day with that level of activity, plus more when I go above the basics, so a few times this week I burned another 200-400 cals on top of that. I connected it to MFP so I could keep track of the food still on there. It's fun to get the data and see how it's all going. I also don't sleep well, but I already knew that LOL... I agree with everyone else -- even though I don't know anyone here, you're the best support EVER. <3 <3 <3 to you all...

Welcome back coops! Sounds like a great holiday, and I'm v impressed you wore a bikini! You rock.

I seriously always question this stuff though -- cos god only knows how many people have deficiencies in the 'normal-stomach-ed' population, they just aren't getting these huge blood panels done all the time. I was very hypothyroid before that was finally discovered (many years ago) cos routine blood draws aren't really a 'thing' that is done. Same for the anemia I had. So really, god only knows what kinds of deficiencies people are walking around with... I think it's a Good Thing that we get this kind of monitoring cos then we can fix it. And also? who knows whether any of it would, absent MAJOR deficiencies a la rickets and scurvy LOL, cause us a bit of harm anyhow? Sometimes what we don't know doesn't hurt us... There's a guy on Thinner Times who's a longtime veteran sleever ("Aviator"), who had a sort of hernia occur in his sleeve, where the top part bulged way out and he could eat a crapton of food again all the sudden, and thus gained like 30lb I think? Anyhow, he had a sleeve revision surgery at the behest of his surgeon, and it went smooth like buttah and he's doing great.

Tell you what. At five years out (and 10 and 15 and etc...mother nature willing...), I will still be rocking this emeffing sleeve. No WAY I'm cutting out most of my stomach then just being a recidivist fat chick. I mean: NO. WAY. Stats can suck it. ETA: I never lost my hunger anyhow, so I've had to learn to cope with that being present the entire process. So meh. EATA: OMG, that is my bariatric clinic being quoted...! They are experts in this procedure, but I normally only see them quoted in academic literature...

Take heart, ye slow losers and stallers!! I've been doing 5:2 since three months now and have still not lost weight lol! But I believe FYE is right abt measurements (not that I've taken any lol) cos I do feel a bit smaller and my snuggest things are fitting a bit better I believe. :-)

Really, it's why I take one 250mg cal citrate per day. I know it's not "enough" according to what I should be getting, but it's more than "nothing" and it supplements the lesser amount of dairy I can take in now. I don't take high amounts of any supplement, and even then I was asked to cut back on B Vitamins and D after the last blood panels cos my levels were plenty high enough. MED: Minimum effective dosage -- more is not always better, or necessary, and can make things worse. Knowing that is a personal thing though, cos every body is unique.

Happy b-day, GT!! Mine is tomorrow. Given that, I caved after fasting perfectly all day, and added a bit of chocolate, Peanut Butter and white wine to dinner with the hubs. For a total of 983 cals. Hey, okay. I'll take it. It's my b-day week! I'm going to enjoy it.

Non-fast day, was pretty good overall, 1700 kcal, which is average for me overall. Healthy stuff mostly too. Plus good workout this morning, so all is not lost.

Second fast day of week, done. 592 cals. Good enough!

FYE, FAB!!!!! You look just wonderful!