What is the science behind 5:2?

Since I learned my valuable lesson, I've been thinking about tweaking my 5:2 diet regimen.  My fast days are on Wednesday and Saturday.  (I know!   Saturday you say?   yes.  I get to sleep late, we generally stay in and my kids are often at my mom's so I go to bed early and feel like I'm only fasting for half the time)  However, for the next couple of weeks, I have things to do on my fasting Saturdays as well as I'll be out of town for two separate weeks Wed - Sun which covers both of my fasting days!

What's a girl to do?  Of course this got me to (over)thinking my upcoming dilemma.  What is it exactly about the 5:2?   Is it simply calories in vs calories out?   Is it the act of fasting that is burning the extra fat?   Is it the act of shocking the system?   What makes this WOE work?  

Here is my thinking.  My TDEE is 1427.  So my total caloric intake for the week including my two fast days is 1427 * 5 = 7135 + 400 + 400 = 7935.  Because of my TDEE, my fast days are around 350 but I even up to 400.    So now, let's take the weekly caloric intake of 7935 / 7 which gives me 1133 calories a day.  If I only allow myself 1133 calories a day and do not fast, will I still loose weight?   This would be the calories in vs calories out method of thinking.

With that way of thinking though, I'm not actually fasting, so I'm not sure it would work.  Do I need to do the 1133 calories in the 16:8 window so that my body has time to burn all that extra fat?

I tried to discuss this with my husband, but he believes that it is shocking the system that is working in our favor so he doesn't think much of the calories in / calories out method.

Certainly I do not want to count calories every day for the rest of my life which is why 16:8 doesn't overly appeal to me.  16:8 is your TDEE - 20%.  I could however do it for a couple weeks because of my upcoming Saturdays.  As for my upcoming trips, I'll have to swap my days for Tues and then Mon.  My trips are only a week apart, so this could get tricky but I do not want to worry about what I'm eating while I'm on vacation.

If anyone can make the 5:2 diet complicated, it would be me.

To count or not to count on feast days?

To count on feast days or not to count.  That is the question.

The first week I started on 5:2 I wasn't watching what I was eating on my feast days and still lost weight.  Then in my second week, I started counting on feast days too just to have an idea of the calories I was taking in.  While I did keep track, I wasn't overly strict about it.

While this was going on I was also a part of a 5:2 group on facebook that consists of 12K people at the moment.  There is much debate on where one should count calories on feast days.  So, like any normal person who wants to stuff their face with as much food as possible while still loosing weight, I gave up the counting.  See if you can see where I did this in my chart below:

Did you see that little blip over on the right side?   Yep...that is the week that I stopped keeping track of my calories on feast days.  Probably, you can also notice when I started keeping track again.

What did this tell me?   Well, it tells me, that for me personally, I need to keep track obviously.  I don't think that I go crazy on feast days, but what I do when I'm keeping track is that I'll swap stuff out.  For example, if I feel like a glass of wine after dinner, I might forgo the pasta and have extra broccoli.

So my little experiment set me back 2 weeks in my weight loss, but I learned a valuable lesson.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

SOUP!   I love soup but I really love cream soup which is one of the reasons that I stuck with Atkins for so long.  Cream soups and bacon...yeah Atkins!

Alas, at some point Atkins stopped working for me and I've switched to 5:2 with good success, but I'm having to relearn how to cook some of my favorite dishes with lower calorie options.

In my quest for lower calories I was lamenting my love of cream soups.  What can I substitute for HWC (heavy whipping cream)?  Plain yogurt or sour cream or almond milk?     I did some experimenting and while sour cream works ok it isn't really "low cal".  Yogurt sort of separated with the heat and almond milk just didn't work.  While I really like almond milk, I don't think it works in soups but I do use the heck out of it in coffee.

Enter fat free half and half.  Who even knew there was such a thing????    Here is my Cream of Mushroom soup recipe which has 2 cups per service and 133 calories.



Cream of Mushroom Soup:

Chicken Broth
Yellow Onion
Fat Free Half and Half
Mushrooms

Cooking for an army?   Yep!   That's me.  My freezer is my friend in that I made a giant pot of this and froze individual bags so that I can just defrost one on a fast day.

The easy way:   Chop the onion and heat it with the chicken broth.  Throw in some chopped mushrooms.  Cook until tasty and then pour in the half and half until heated.  That's it.

The harder way to make this soup:  I pour the soup into a blender to really mix it up.  Be careful if you do this when it is hot as your blender is likely to explode via the top from the heat build up.  I save a little chicken broth and put that in the blender with the chopped mushrooms then pour that into the broth / onion mixture that is already heating.

When I put it into the bowl I put a few chopped green onion tops just to add some color.  Honestly, the mushrooms combined with the cream make this soup an unappealing grey color but it is very tasty.

Play around with it and let me know how you liked it and what spin you put on it to make it your own.
Calorie Breakdown: