Week 1 : BOOM! Lost 3.5lbs

Thankfully, it appears 5:2 is working. I am fucking chuffed, obviously, but like I said, the first week of a diet always has pretty good results because you end up pissing a lot. So let's not get too excited, as the tough part is sticking to it beyond week 2...

So, what did I eat? I have to say, knowing you can eat what you want is incredibly weird. I still don't entirely trust it, so I have been keeping track of my daily food allowance on myfitnesspal. I know, I know — it kinda defeats the purpose a little, but there are several good reasons for this. The first is that when it comes to food, I am programmed to think in Weight Watchers points. For EVERYTHING. Daim bar = 4 points. Wagon Wheelie = 2 points. French Fries from a multipack = 2. Bubblegum split ice lolly = 1 point. Wow… I am desperately trying to think of a food that is not loaded with sugar or salt and I'm getting nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except broccoli = 0 points… So now that I'm not on WW, I need to familiarise myself with nutritional values of food products, because otherwise it's very easy to stuff yourself. Which I have done a bit this week. 

Myfitnesspal has given me 1320 calories a day to use up. This seems like a lot. There are a lot of foods that I used to avoid on WW, because they were just too many points from my daily allowance. Which meant you ate a lot of salad because you had to, when really you wanted to punch that salad right in its stupid face. But now I get to look at actual values of food, rather than the values WW has assigned to them, which is proving interesting. Although the diet just advises to stay within a woman's 2000 daily calories, I know my body enough to realise that I need to stay in the lower end of that. 

However, I've still managed to eat a lot of nice things things this week. I've had a meat pizza, cheese twists, paella, chocolate biscuits, an apple doughnut, mum's yummy pasta, KFC and Twiglets. And a hot dog (I'm fucking pushing it, aren't I?) Not bad going. But there are a few things I have learnt along the way. 

Lesson 1 : You don't need to go mental.   

KFC day was bad and indulgent and I really didn't feel good after eating it. Not because it wasn't tasty (it was gooooood!), but because I ate too much of it, mainly because of my mantra, "if you are going to fuck up your diet, fuck it up good and proper". This is wrong and stupid and not how you are supposed to approach this way of eating. Also, after seeing how many calories were in what I had eaten, I realised that it was just needless gorging. Bad, bad, bad.

Lesson 2 : If you're not hungry, don't eat.

I suddenly had an obsession with eating Twiglets one afternoon. So I went to a shop that sold Twiglets, bought a big bag of Twiglets, and then pretty much ate all the Twiglets. I was still very full of Twiglets by dinner, but I still ate dinner THAT I DID NOT NEED, EVEN AFTER ALL THOSE TWIGLETS. One thing this diet teaches you is that it will take quite a long time for people in the western world to even start wasting away. For most of us, missing a meal wont leave us feeling weak, or lead to us having a drop in blood sugar level, or even make us feel tired. If you are not hungry, don't just eat for the sake of it.

Lesson 3 : Don't get obsessed with Twiglets.

Lesson 4 : Do not treat yourself to a 5-pack of doughnuts after your exercise class has been cancelled. 

Yup — I'm afraid this happened. I went all kitted out in my gym gear to a class, only to find out it wasn't on. So then I went to Morrisons where I spotted a reduced pack of apple doughnuts for 35p. I was fucked off the class wasn't on, and that I was now wearing white slouch socks in public when I hadn't even been working out, leaving me feeling like a massive impostering twat. And before I knew it, I was in my kitchen with with a bagful of shopping, topped with sugary doughnuts. The good news is that I only ate one devious doughnut. My boyfriend ate two (drunk), but alas, the others have gone in the bin. I really hate waste, but I couldn't justify spending 400 calories on two doughnuts just so they wouldn't get chucked. So, for one night only, I managed to hang up my hat as a human dustbin. Baby steps, baby steps…


But what about my fast days? Well, they were really, well… doable, actually. 

Day 1 Fast : First thing I ate was at 1.30pm, and it was a one-egg omelette with salad. I have to admit, this was not a great meal idea on my part. 

Omelette of oppression.

I seriously don't know how I managed to waste 200 calories on this watery meal, but it's no wonder I was fucking ravenous when I got home. Which led to me devouring a LOT of cashew nuts, taking me to 650 calories instead of 500 — ARGH! Dinner was a Chinese-style soup. My aunt excitedly asked me for the recipe for this — you should have seen her face when I told her it was just a turkey stir fry that I added water to. God, that sounds grim. Again, it was filling but not very interesting. I'm *so* glad I made enough to have it again on my next fast day…

Day 2 Fast : Right. Did NOT want another cashew nut situation. So I made a really nice tuna salad with a whole can of tuna, salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber capers and a bit of balsamic dressing. I ate it at about 2.30pm and it was really, really tasty. RESULT. Same flipping soup for dinner (along with some diet Fanta and 8 grapes) but spent a respectable 510 calories, with fewer headaches too.

For next week, I would like to have better fast day meals, eat less crap and just get on with it really. I think the 'treating food differently' bit has yet to kick in, but I'm hoping it will get there. It might have even started already — when we went out for the hot dogs, I opted for the 2 potato latkes as a side instead of the very large portions of chips, which i totally LOVE. That's an improvement, right? 

Let's just say yes. 

The Fast Diet
Start weight : 11st 12lbs
Week 1 : 11st 8.5lbs