{"id":7605,"date":"2015-10-15T10:24:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T09:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=7605"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:47:08","slug":"52-some-conclusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2015\/10\/15\/52-some-conclusions\/","title":{"rendered":"5:2 &#8211; some conclusions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A bit over a year ago, I decided to experiment with the \u201c5:2\u201d Way Of Eating and I <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/blog\/2014\/08\/07\/the-52-way-of-eating\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote about it<\/a> at the time. I said that I would report back on progress. Well, it has been a while, but I thought that it was time to deliver that progress report &#8230;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The idea of 5:2 is simple: reduce your calorie input [to 600 for men] on 2 non-consecutive days each week. The anticipated effect is a reduction in weight and a selection of other health benefits. Eventually a target weight is likely to be reached and you can cut down to just one fast day per week.<\/p>\n<p>My goal was not to lose too much weight &#8211; just a little bit. I was particularly interested in some of the purported health benefits &#8211; like strengthened immune system.<\/p>\n<p>The executive summary of my results is that not a lot happened over the course of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Some more detailed points and observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I approached it scientifically &#8211; carefully measuring and controling my calorie input each \u201cfast\u201d day.<\/li>\n<li>I rarely cheated at all. If I did, I documented the fact.<\/li>\n<li>I weighed myself and took my waist measurement each week and recorded the data.<\/li>\n<li>My weight fairly rapidly declined, though not far, and then plateaued. Here is the plot:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2015\/10\/weight.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-7606\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2015\/10\/weight-520x366.png\" alt=\"weight\" width=\"520\" height=\"366\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My waist measurement has not changed.<\/li>\n<li>I have been generally healthy through the year. No change really.<\/li>\n<li>I did not feel hungry all the time on fast days. I did feel that I was &#8220;lacking something\u201d. A large glass of water sometimes helped.<\/li>\n<li>I saw clear indications that my body was burning fat on fast days. [I found that I needed to pee a lot.]<\/li>\n<li>I enjoyed the day after a fast day, but aimed to avoid over-eating to compensate for the deprivations of the day before.<\/li>\n<li>I swapped to a single fast day [indicated by the red arrow on the plot] and my weight seems quite steady.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My plan is to shortly stop fasting entirely for a couple of months [at least] and I will monitor my weight in the same way. It will be interesting to see whether I can spot a trend.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/colinwalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6579\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colin_walls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6583\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/twitter.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/colinwalls.author\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6591\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/facebook.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/116301748426290440139\/posts?hl=en%3Fhl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6587\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/google.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"40\" height=\"40\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/ColinWalls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6595\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/slideshare.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"41\" height=\"41\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6599\" src=\"http:\/\/s3-blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/files\/2014\/01\/wordpress.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bit over a year ago, I decided to experiment with the \u201c5:2\u201d Way Of Eating and I wrote about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10405,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7605\/revisions\/10405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=7605"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}