How do you handle fast days on 5:2?

Given the interest in my post on the 5:2 diet I thought I’d post again passing on the accumulated wisdom of . . . er . . . just over 2 weeks dieting.

So, how often do you eat? Seems to vary a lot. Some seem to manage an entire day without eating before they have their evening meal. Others including Michael Mosley don’t eat between breakfast and dinner. That has the advantage you can have a decent breakfast, a bowl of porridge, say or a couple of boiled eggs but I still find it a long time to go without food. Maybe that will ease over time but I find being hungry immensely distracting and can’t think about anything else.

So I eat - just as I normally would. 4 times a day. Breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. I’ve tried doing without anything between lunch and supper but get ravenous around 4-5pm. So I have a snack of a crispbread and some low calorie hummus. (Low cal red pepper hummus has less than the original kind)

For breakfast I’ve tried a boiled egg and a crispbread - a bit meagre even though the crispbreads are the wonderful Peter’s Yard’s. (A seeded Ryvita would be a cheaper alternative). I prefer a bowl of low fat yoghurt and blueberries, which keeps me going for several hours.

For lunch I’ve experimented with soup (low cal but not particularly filling), big salads and crispbreads, raw veg and hummus. Cheese, for me, is a no-no. You can’t really have more than 30g and I find that incredibly frustrating.

Dinner is a bit more cheering. Stir-fries work best I think (prawns are really low cal) or some steamed or baked fish and veg though obviously you can’t allow oil (119 calories a tablespoon) or butter (205 calories an ounce) anywhere near it. Or potatoes. Or rice . . . . (You can see one can get quite tetchy by this time of day) Large Asiany soups (without noodles) are also quite satisfying. And if you haven’t blown 300 calories already you could have a calorie-counted ready meal.

If you’re looking for inspiration there are some delicious recipes from food writer Xanthe Clay who is also on the diet here, some 200-400 calorie recipes on the BBC Good Food website and a good ebook I’ve discovered called The 5:2 diet book by Kate Harrison, downloadable from Amazon at £2.56. Money well spent.