The Fast Diet

These last few weeks I’ve had several clients enthusing about the effectiveness of the Fast Diet or 5:2 diet, as promoted by Dr Michael Mosley (http://thefastdiet.co.uk/).

Basically, the diet means severely restricting your calorie intake 2 non-consecutive days a week to 500 for women and 600 for men. The rest of the time you can eat normally and because you know this is just a few hours away it makes it easier to comply.

I am personally interested because there is heart disease, late onset diabetes and dementia in my family history, as well as my trousers getting tighter over the last year and I do love a cake or two. After 1 month I’ve noticed good results in the waist and brain departments. So plan to drop down to the maintenance level of fasting 1 day a week for the long term benefits.

The theory is we evolved at a time when feast or famine was the norm, so our body’s responds to stress by going into maintenance mode, which makes it healthier and tougher.

The diet not only reduces weight there is plenty of research showing a wide range of health benefits from fasting such as:
• Reduces IGF-1 which means you are reducing a number of age related diseases such as cancer.
• It switches on countless repair genes in response to this stressor.
• It gives your pancreas a rest, which will boost the effectiveness of the insulin it produces in response to elevated glucose, cause we tend to over eat. Increased insulin sensitivity will reduce your risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and strokes ( by reducing LDL -‘bad’ cholesterol), cognitive decline and dementia.
• An overall enhancement in mood and sense of wellbeing. This may be a consequence of your brain producing increased levels of neurotrophic factor, which tends to improve your mood and clarity.

For people in good health intermittent fasting should be no problem. There are, however, certain groups for whom intermittent fasting is not advised. Type 1 diabetics are included in this list, along with anyone suffering from an eating disorder. If you are already extremely lean, do not fast. Children should never fast, so this is a plan for over-18s only. Pregnant women should eat according to government guidelines and not limit their daily calorie intake. If you are on medication of any description, please see your doctor first, as you would before embarking on any weight-loss regime.

Jeni

28 Febuary 2013