Intermittent fasting, the key?

Dear Journal,

Just when I thought I couldn’t know more about proper eating habits, I stumbled on an article on the fastdiet.co.uk website. The first topic that caught my eye amongst others was that of “intermittent fasting”. When I looked at it, I felt a little cynical about it because I have always had the opinion that starving would only make your body hoard fat and all those carbohydrates that you want it to burn off.

Anyway, I just read through because I am a curious person by nature and I would like to give their opinions a listening ear at least. I learnt about the fascinating technique of intermittent fasting with the 5:2 regimes by Michael. Because it would be too much work to summarise all I have learnt (which I really don’t want to summarise anyway), I’ll take excerpts from the work and let you enjoy the pleasure of reading it yourself.

“We all know how you are supposed to lose weight: eat low-fat foods, exercise more… and never, ever skip meals. This has been standard dietary advice for decades and though it may work for some people, levels of obesity continue to soar. So is there an alternative? We think there is. Intermittent fasting. Based on the work of leading scientists from around the world, this is an exciting new alternative to standard dieting.

Intermittent Fasting does not mean stopping eating entirely. It means reducing the amount you eat, but only for quite short periods of time.

In The Fast Diet book I outline my experiences of trying different forms of intermittent fasting, before settling on what I called a 5:2 regime. With 5:2 intermittent fasting you eat normally five days a week and diet two days a week, cutting your calorie intake for those two days to a ¼ of their normal level. This means that on, say, a Monday and a Thursday you will eat 500 calories if you are a woman, 600 if you are a man.

If you stick to this plan then you should lose around 1lb (0.46kg) a week if you are a woman, slightly more for a man. Success also depends on not over-eating on your normal days.

You should not only lose weight but also enjoy a wide range of health benefits. Studies of intermittent fasting show that not only do people see improvements in blood pressure and their cholesterol levels, but also in their insulin sensitivity.

As one of the medical experts I interviewed put it: ‘There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.’

Welcome to The Fast Diet and to the community on this site. We will keep you up to date with the latest in this exciting new field. You can read how others are managing this way of life and pick up lots of helpful tips. We hope it works for you”.

Having read all that, I don’t know about you but I am willing to try this method for a short while and see what promise it holds for me. *wink* Till next time! Always a pleasure writing to you guys, you rock!