I am a proponent of 5:2. Two days a week of very low calorie "fasting". Your body responds to very low calories and no food in the same manner, according to what I have read, but it is easier for most people to make it through a low calorie day. The two fast days are always separated by at least one day, preferably two or more. I did Monday and Thursday as my fast days.

The reason for using 5:2 is it is just one more way to cut calories. Instead of cutting a little from every meal, you eat maintenance meals, but two days a week you basically cut out two of the three meals, so that for the week it is 4/21 or roughly a 20% reduction in calories. Early on, I was abusing it by eating too little on non fast days. It would be fine to throw some in to ramp up a slow loss like I am doing now, but it isn't okay if you are severely restricting calories other days.

I will use it if I decide to let myself go at a big dinner or something. I am eating 1650 a day right now, so a 600 calorie "fast" day would offset an extra 1050 calories. So if I had a day where I ate 3750, 2 "fast" days would make it average out.

On a different subject, the miniature snacks we were talking about the other day are pretty much disappearing from my diet due to saturated fat. I was just in the grocery store looking at different minis and "bites". I think I might make some of these cookies:
https://wholefully.com/healthy-oatme...s/print/32119/
as one of my servings of whole grain. I might go with chocolate PB2 instead of or in addition to raisins.