5:2 – what do YOU eat?

It was rather disconcerting to wake up on Friday – post-fast – not feeling at all hungry, empty or weak. Either I had eaten too much – or I had struck it lucky with my fasting food choices. I desperately want it to be the latter, but I fear it was the former.

On our first fast (6^th May), we stuck to raw fruit and raw and blanched vegetables, and I was awake in the night feeling very hungry – and pathetically faint when I eventually got up.

Since then we have been desperate to find foods that will keep us sated for longer. On Thursday I ate one apple for breakfast, plus two cups of coffee with skimmed milk. Then a small banana at 11.0 am before my aquarobics class. For lunch I had ClearSpring Miso soup (28 calories for a bowl!) with a handful of prawns and two small slices of chicken breast, followed by another apple when I went back to my desk. 

Dinner was a salad of rocket and tomatoes with about eight king prawns and six or seven griddled scallops. I had qualms about the tomatoes with the seafood, and just had one, but Steve pointed out that they are a key ingredient in a Marie-Rose dressing, and piled about three onto his plate. I made up for it with a couple of teaspoons of his oriental dressing which I know for a fact contains sugar, though I chose not to hear how much went into it.   It took a long time to eat this big protein rich salad. And I was satisfied all evening – though I ate a kiwi before bed “just in case”. I do not wish to repeat the experience of waking up hungry at 4.0aam.

Well, I have done a quick calorie check – and of course calorie calculators are controversial and confusing, many of them saying quite opposite things to each other (a lot like the experts I interview), but, using the most generous (to me) calculations, my day’s food did seem to add up to only just over 500 calories. (Although it felt like - and I secretly suspect that it was -- up to150 calories more).
During the evening we visited a friend who is also doing the 5:2 – who isn’t? – and she fills up on chia seeds in smoothies of cucumber, celery and spinach...

Another friend eats no breakfast, then just Miso for lunch, and a "light" supper. While another also skips lunch in order to enjoy a "decent" supper. What is one person's "light", and another's "decent", I want to know.

Over the years I have interviewed many people who’ve lost weight using Lighter Life’s regime of replacement meal powders. They survive on 500 calories a day, every day, for months – and most say they never get hungry. Is there a secret ingredient in these powders that stops people feeling hungry? Or is it, as Lighter Life says, that when the body starts using its fat for fuel our appetite becomes suppressed? 

This has not happened to my hairdresser who has been doing WeightWatchers’ online diet. He has resigned himself to always feeling hungry, saying: “If you want to remain lean in mid-life, hunger is the price you have to pay.”

Well, for me, that is the number one reason why any diet fails. So I really want to know: what are you eating on the 5:2? 
Angela Dowden's fab 5:2 recipe book, above, is packed with ideas, and there is now also a 5:2 app to go with it.