The Fast Diet… Coming Our Way Soon

There’s a new book out in England and it’s the diet you’ve been looking for:  (Please note the sarcasm in my written voice here) it’s the 5:2 diet!  

Fast for two days during the week and eat whatever the heck you want the other five.

Co-written by a doctor (and we know that gives lots of credibility in the nutrition field), it focuses on something that’s actually sometimes associated with Paleo- intermittent fasting.

The premise is that, according to the book, “the body begins to turn off the fat-storing mechanisms and turn on the fat-burning mechanisms”.

OK, I’ll buy that, after having read a lot of sound research on that principle, however I still have issues with intermittent fasting and with the idea that we should ‘eat whatever we want for the other five days in the week’.

In my experience working with clients, many state they’d tried it but took a skewed approach to the intermittent fasting concept.  They report  having used it as a reason to, for the few days leading up to the fast ‘go nuts with eating all sorts of junk in mass quantities, telling themselves it’s ok since they’re going to ‘be good on X day and fast”.  Then they’d fast for a period of time, reach uncomfortable hunger levels and end up eating far too much again.

In other words, I find most people don’t opt to implement intermittent fasting because of the science behind it but rather, for the idea that it allows what is in effect, a binge and purge situation.

I am not a fan.

Interpreting it that way makes it no different from following any of the other strange and potentially harmful diets out there.  How long is someone really going to do a 5:2 approach?  The rest of their lives?  Or just until they lose a certain number of pounds?  And then what?  Back to eating anything and everything seven days per week?

Please.  Just going Paleo is an easy way to lose weight, steadily and permanently and in such a manner that you won’t actually want to eat other things any day of the week!