Another Ten Weeks of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

I recently completed a 15 day juice fast, and today I’m launching into ten weeks of 5:2 intermittent fasting. This means that I’ll have two 24-hour periods each week where I won’t be eating anything. I attempted this same challenge last year, but I only made it to eight weeks – this time I’m going all the way.

The Goals of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

I found the juice fast to be an enjoyable experience, and this had a lot to do with having clear goals from the beginning. I undertook the challenge in order to gain some control over my sugar cravings and increase my self-discipline. I sort of lost sight of my goals with the last period of 5:2 intermittent fasting, and this is why it became so easy to quit – I didn’t have a good enough reason to continue. This time my goal is clear:

I want to improve my ability to differentiate between real hunger and the urge to eat for comfort. I also want to learn to enjoy the feeling of being hungry.

5:2 Intermittent Fasting to Recognise Hunger Pains

My experiences with mindful eating has shown me that I often mistake feelings like tiredness or boredom for hunger. This means that I’m regularly stuffing things in my mouth when there is no need to. I want to use the next twenty fast days to help me become better at recognizing hunger.

5:2 Intermittent Fasting to Learn to Enjoy Feeling Hungry

Feeling hungry is the way the body tells me that it is time to eat, but I can go months without ever really experiencing hunger. This is because I’m ‘grazing’ all day long so my stomach is never empty. I don’t believe this is healthy, and it is during these months of never feeling hunger that I pile on the weight.

It is only since hitting middle-age that I’ve stopped allowing my stomach to go empty. It’s not something that I’ve consciously decided – I work from home so grazing is easy because I’m never far from the fridge. When I worked as a nurse there were days when we were too busy to take a break. I didn’t mind because it felt so nice to eat after being hungry for a couple of hours – they are right about it being the best sauce. I want to regain my appreciation of hunger during these ten weeks of fasting, so I can stop grazing all day like a cow.

I’m Not Weighing Myself during My Ten Weeks of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

Another big mistake I made with my last 5:2 intermittent fast was getting on the weighing scales too regularly. I stopped losing weight about half-way through, and I became disillusioned – this became a drain on my motivation. This time I’m not going to weigh myself at all until the end. My weight after the juice fast was 82.2 kg, and it would be nice to get it a bit closer to 75 kg over the next ten weeks.

The other things I’ll be doing differently with this juice fast include:

• I will eat 500 calories on the morning of the fast day and go twenty-four hours without food – so the time I finish this meal will be the time I start eating the next day.
• I’m going to be exercising far more than I did during the last attempt – I’ll stick to walking on the fast days.
• I’m going to be careful about what I eat on the other five days of the week when I’m not fasting.
• Over the next ten weeks I’m going to do research on healthy recipes, so I’ll have changed to a diet that is more nutritious and delicious by the end of the fast.