Could you survive on a fast two days of the week?
The 5:2 diet has taken the country by storm, there seems to be a huge number of people taking part in the fasting eating plan.
To follow the plan you eat a normal diet for days of the week, the other two days you limit yourself to just 500 calories each day.
Yes, that is a small amount of food - but if you plan properly and eat low-calorie foods it's a lot easier than it sounds.
Dr Kelly Johnston, senior nutritionist at LighterLife shares her expert opinion on the 5:2 diet.
“Intermittent fasting gives your body some downtime from conventional food and also brings with it widely reported health benefits including increased life-span, improved cognitive function and protection against a number of conditions. However fasting days can be extremely challenging as it is hard to get all the nutrition you need with such a low calorie intake."
Here he answers questions about the 5:2 diet.
In your opinion, what are the benefits of the 5:2 diet?
From a practical perspective this type of regime is more flexible and better suited to modern lifestyles as it allows individuals to eat freely for 5 days of the week and only restrict on the other 2. Despite the allowance of free eating, a few small trials of this diet have shown that individuals often end up eating fewer calories overall; comparable or better than other widely used methods of calorie restriction. However, there are relatively few published studies and certainly not enough to be able inform and influence dietetic practice or draw firm conclusions. However, preliminary data indicates that following a 5:2 regime for just a few weeks can lead to measurable improvements in metabolic health.
How much weight could you expect to lose (as an estimate) over a month period?
Some may not lose any and other may lose up to 7lbs. What, if any, a person loses is highly variable and will depend on many factors, including but not limited to the starting weight of the person, the dietary intake on their ‘5’ days etc.
If one assumes that followers of this plan don’t compensate for the calories they didn’t consume on the fasting days, a person would have a calorie deficit of around 3000kcal per week. If maintained over the course of a month, they could be looking at weight loss of between 3-6 lbs. Again, this is very variable and some may not lose any (if they decide to eat the extra calories on their ‘5’ days) and some may lose more, if they also energy restrict by eating very healthily with smaller portions.
In general, why is this a good diet to try and lose weight with/ what makes it stand out over any other option?
There has been very little research done in humans with on this type of eating plan and we still don’t know if actually it does stand out over any other option for weight loss, or if in fact it is far more suited to weight maintenance. Lighter life is embarking on a 3 year research programme with experts from the Nutrition and Metabolism Group at the University of Surrey whereby we aim to investigate the benefits of intermittent fasting on a range of cardiometabolic outcomes including glucose tolerance, lipid metabolism, insulin sensitivity and inflammation. Data from animal studies and some human studies are promising and so we are excited to be able to investigate these potential benefits in humans too. Lead investigators Dr Denise Robertson and Dr Adam Collins say “The potential benefits of the 5:2 diet go beyond that of simply weight loss through calorie restriction. Like other animals, humans are metabolically designed to function through periods of feast and famine, a complete contrast to modern lifestyles that are more conducive to feast and feast. It is this lifestyle of feast and feast that is contributing to the increased prevalence of obesity and metabolic disease such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease that is synonymous with modern society. The 5:2 diet may be metabolically advantageous as it helps retrain the body to operate as it was designed to do, hence improving overall metabolic health. Considering your metabolic health is far more important than simply body weight and size, regimes like the 5:2 diet have greater therapeutic potential”.
Could the diet be seen as dangerous? Are there any risks to fasting like this?
Assuming no underlying medical conditions, then no, restricting your calorie intake for 2 (non-consecutive) days out of 7 is very unlikely to be associated with any risks.
What kind of meals should you aim to eat on the other days you are not fasting?
This will be largely down to choice and whether or not you are attempting to use this diet to drop a little bit of weight, or simply maintain your body weight where it is.
I would personally advocate that on the days that you are not fasting you can eat normally and we would advocate that you eat plenty of fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, pulses, lower-fat dairy products and lower-fat protein-rich foods such as lean red meat, poultry, fish and eggs. And of course there can often be room for a little treat if you fancy it.
LighterLife has launched ‘Fast’ - a new intermittent fasting plan based on the increasingly popular 5:2 lifestyle mantra, which is sweeping the UK.
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