Day One: The how much

I am being joined on this fun filled journey by my best friend ever in the whole world, the fabulous and funky Dream. This is a VERY GOOD THING because Dream is not only an extraordinary cook who could make cardboard taste like a mouthgasm, but she also has the patience and skills to do research and come up with new and interesting ideas.

I'm not going to go into the details of how the 5:2 strategy works or what it involves, because you can find all that elsewhere. It is enough to say, that for 2 days in every 5, you limit your food intake to 500 kCal (for a woman - men get 600, as always, so unfair). So my jump-straight-in gung-ho approach is - no problem, I'll eat a bunch of carrot sticks and wing it. To be fair, I decided that I was going to start this yesterday evening so I haven't had a great deal of time to plan terribly carefully, but the truth is, I'm not very good at the planning side of things, so having Dream by my side exponentially increases my chances of success.

She has already pointed me at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ in order that I can track how many calories I eat on fast days. I have tried various calorie counters over the years, and generally found them very tedious and complicated to use. Plus, I tend to rebel against the concept of calorie counting - isn't the whole point of this strategy that I don't have to bother with all that? But, I concede that at least to start with, knowing how much food contains 500kCal is pretty important, and I have very little clue.  It would be rather pathetic to mess it up by wrongly estimating my intake right from the start. And, of course, 5 days a week I can happily ignore it.

Luckily the Fitness Pal calorie counter is a doddle to use. It loaded up on my Android phone in seconds and I have already tapped in today's feast. I'm hoping I will find some way to export the contents to this blog but that will require me to actually pay attention and do some research, so don't hold your breath. 

In the meantime, I started off today with 2 cups of coffee. I am lucky that I am not a fan of milky coffee - put a cappuccino under my nose and I'm likely to vomit. So I don't have to deprive myself of that treat - a latte can be up to 300kCal! However, I do put sugar in my black coffee, and can't see myself getting used to it unsweetened. I figure I can either carry on with the sugar and include it as part of my allowance, or try sweetener. Today I have done both. This morning's flask had 2 sugars in it, costing me 36kCal. This afternoon I am trying sweetener and frankly can't taste the difference. Better buy some of that for home then!

So far today I have eaten 400g of delicious sweet strawberries, which my new pal tells me is 132kCal. I grazed them over the whole morning and don't feel hungry at the moment - there have been a few pangs, hence the coffee. 

When I first considered doing this, the idea of cooking up a 300 kCal dinner seemed pointless. I figured I would just snack on carrots (getting a theme here?) and not bother with proper meals. The recipes in the 5:2 cookbook didn't make sense - all that effort for so little sustenance? However, I'm now getting the concept of quality over quantity. Taking inspiration from the BOOK and loading up the ingredients into my phone, I am looking forward to chicken and roast vegetables for dinner. Like, really looking forward to it! If I'm going to eat so little, I might as well make it really yummy. Dinner, at the table, paying attention to each mouthful. Sounds like a good habit to get into.