It may sound pretty strange and far from reality but some dieting experts are sure we can keep eating whatever we want to and still lose weight. What is the trick? Michael Moseley, M.D. and Mimi Spencer explain it in their new bestselling book – The Fast Diet.
The idea is as easy as pie – 5 days a week you can eat all you want to and for 2 non-consecutive days a week you’re to reduce the number of calories you get daily. It means that women can consume 500 calories a day while men are allowed to eat 600 calories only.
The diet was unofficially called “5:2” or alternative day fasting and is now considered healthful and workable by several scientists and medical specialists. They have completed a few studies that prove it can really help those who want to lose weight with impunity. How exactly does it work? According to a certified nutritionist Dana James, when we reduce the number of calories we consume our organism quickly launches its survival mechanism. It starts turning on the genes that are to burn weight and turning off the genes that are to store fat. So in the course of time these changes lead to a weight loss provided that such calorie restriction is done from time to time only. In this case your body won’t experience significant stress and you won’t regain weight.
What are the possible pitfalls of this dieting approach? First, the positive results of the diet have not been proved yet and a lot of research is still to be done. Second, this nutritional system can do dirt to the people with disordered eating. They may ignore the idea of two-day fasting and replace it with an entire month of starvation. It’s also not recommended to run to KFC when you have a day-off or eat a 500-calorie hamburger instead of normal portions of ordinary food.
How to align alternative day fasting with your busy lifestyle? This is another problem yet to be solved. While some people say it’s easy to stick to this diet due to its short timeline others state that for a person who spends the major part of his or her day at work it will be quite a challenge. It’s hard to eat almost nothing in the office looking at your colleagues enjoying their lunch!
We’re still to wait and see if the “5:2” diet proves productive and meanwhile look for other ways to lose weight. Or will you become one of the pioneers to try it?