the 5:2 fast diet™

Hi all,

Thought you might like to know that we have created a sister website, fast-exercises.com, which you might find helpful and interesting. If you want to lose weight and improve your health then the evidence is clear that the best way to do this is through calorie restriction (whatever way works for you) and increased activity.

We are trying to close the gap between what the scientists who study exercise know and what most of us believe. I’ve spent a couple of years looking into the latest science of exercise and it has been a real revelation.

Fast Exercises are a mix of scientifically tested ways to get the maximum improvements in the minimum time. The ideas behind this approach are in many ways just as radical and surprising as those behind the Fast Diet. Rather than going for slow and steady the emphasis is on short but intense activity. It is called HIT, High Intensity Training, and it is an approach that can be incorporated into an existing exercise regime or be used by people who never seem to find the time to exercise.

Peta, who loves exercise, builds HIT into her runs. I don’t enjoy exercise and find it a struggle, so I’ve found ways to build it into my daily life. I almost never get into trainers or shorts but have found ways to get fit none-the-less.

This approach is for people who older and less fit, not just for the young and superfit.

You can start at almost any age and improve the quality of life.

There are dangers in starting any new exercise regime, so the exercises we recommend have been carefully graded to reduce the risk of injury or strain. As ever, I look forward to your thought and reactions –

All the best,

Michael

“The easy, no-gym fitness plan from the doctor behind the Fast Diet… Short exercise bursts get the most from a workout in the least possible time and dramatic changes can be achieved… If your body seems to be unresponsive to exercise, or your life is too busy for long workouts, Fast Exercise is for you” –The Times

“Informative, easy to understand… offers not only good health but a host of spillover benefits besides… Fast Exercise is the way of the future.” –Professor Stuart M. Phillips Ph.D., FACSM, FACN Department of Kinesiology, Exercise Metabolism Research Group McMaster University, CANADA and Visiting Professor, School of Exercise, Sport Science, and Health Loughborough University, UK

“Fast Exercise is a great practical introduction into the field of high intensity exercise. The personal perspective matched with references to the both old and new scientific literature provides compelling reading.” –Carl Johan Sundberg MD, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Physiology & Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

“A health revolution” –The New York Times

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I hope you all had a lovely Christmas though, sadly, there is always a price to pay for that enjoyable overindulgence. If you are anything like me you probably ate too much, stepped on the scales on New Year’s day, and sighed.

The average Brit puts on 2kgs (nearly 5 lbs) during December and I certainly put on almost that much over the month. I, however, have an unusual excuse. I’m making another self experimenting Horizon documentary, but this time I have had to gorge myself on meat for a month to see what effect that has on my microbiota (the bacteria in my gut).

That particular experiment has just finished so I’m back on 5:2 on Monday and expect to shed those extra pounds some time in January. I’m looking forward to my fast days as I actually miss the occasional hunger pangs and the mental sharpness that comes with it.

I’m glad to say enthusiasm for intermittent fasting shows no sign of waning. As an article in today’s Times put it,

“It’s the diet that launched the publishing phenomenon of 2013 and saw fortysomething men talking calories with the authority usually reserved for World Cup qualifiers..  A year ago it was a fad amongst fashionable West London mums wanting to lose a bit of baby weight. Now it’s revolutionised the diet industry”.

Our book, “The Fast Diet”, having topped the best seller list for much of 2013, shot right back up the charts to number one on New Year’s day. There are a whole slew of new or updated books connected to intermittent fasting coming out in the next few days. Along with the usual copy cat books there are a couple written by the scientists who inspired my interest in intermittent fasting and which I wrote about extensively in “The Fast Diet”.

Out soon is an updated version of “The Two Day Diet” by Dr Michelle Harvie and Professor Tony Howell, which first came out last February. This book advocates eating a Mediterranean diet 5 days a week and cutting out the carbs two days a week (the recipes add up to effectively 1000 calories a day on the carbs-free days).

Their studies show that on this diet you will lose an average of about 0.5kg (1 lb) a week, most of it fat. Their volunteers, women at increased risk of breast cancer, also saw improvements in their insulin levels (which is important for reducing cancer risk). They are planning further large scale trials, involving men.

A new book, out next week, is “The Every Other Day Diet” by Dr Krista Varady.  If you have read “The Fast Diet” or seen my Horizon documentary, “Eat, Fast, Live Longer”, then you will already know something about Krista and her work.  I have also written about it on this site under ADF (alternate day fasting).

The basic principle of this diet is you cut your calories to around 500 calories every other day (480 for women, 520 for men). Krista recommends that you eat 400 calories as a single meal (lunch or dinner) and 100 calories as a snack.

On what she calls “Feast Days” you are allowed to eat whatever you want. Her research suggests that on average people tend to eat only about 10% more than normal, perhaps because of a shrinking stomach. The rate at which you will lose fat depends on how fat you were to begin with and how much you eat on your Feast Days.

According to Krista’s latest paper , “Alternate day fasting for weight loss in normal weight and overweight subjects: a randomized controlled trial.” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24215592) if you are not obese to start with then you can expect to lose about 5kgs over 12 weeks, which works out about 1 lb a week, as well as improvements in your bloods.  Krista recommends weighing yourself every day, skipping breakfast and avoiding eating mini meals (mainly because people have a tendency to underestimate how much they eat).

So which of these approaches is the best one? 

I think the best approach is the one that suits you and which you find you can stick to. We all respond differently to different diets, which is why we called our book “The Fast Diet”, rather than the 5:2 diet. I developed the 5:2 approach because it suited me, but I recognise it won’t suit everyone. Some will prefer the more disciplined “Two Day Diet” approach, others will prefer the more obviously “feast and famine” approach of ADF (alternate day fasting). Yet another approach, which I know some people here have tried, is a 4:3 approach. I would be very interested to hear the experiences of those who have tried either or both.

Fast Exercise

As well as making a range of documentaries in 2013, I was busy researching and writing a book on exercise, which I’ve rather imaginatively call, “Fast Exercise”. Like the Fast Diet it is a radically different approach to the standard advice and like the Fast Diet, it is the product of cutting edge science. I hope you will find the science behind it as fascinating as I do.

The main idea behind Fast Exercise is that instead of trying to shed weight and get healthier by plodding away on a treadmill or jogging in the rain for hours every week, you can get many of the more important benefits of exercise from a few minutes a day of intense activity.

Although the exercises we demonstrate in the book are intense, they are not prolonged. This is not like “Tabata” or “Insanity”, exercise regimes designed for people who are already very fit.

The exercises we recommend will enhance existing exercise regimes, but they have been primarily developed to ensure they are safe and suitable for people who are older (50 plus), overweight and with conditions like diabetes.

I’ve written the book with Peta Bee, an award winning health and sports journalist, and with the help of Professor Jamie Timmons, who featured in a Horizon I made in 2012 called, “The Truth about Exercise”. If you want to know more then do buy the book or visit fast-exercises.com.

The versions of HIT (high intensity training) that we recommend in Fast Exercise have been shown to improve your aerobic fitness (the strength of your heart and lungs) and your metabolic fitness (how your body responds to a sugar rush) more effectively and in much less time that standard exercise.

If you want to lose weight, improve your health and get better toned (who doesn’t) then intensity is the key.

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And a really warm welcome to the Fast Diet website. This first week of January is, of course, prime time for embarking on a get-fit-lose-fat programme – and lots of people (across the world) are about to fast for the first time. So what do you need to know? You’ll have gathered the basics from the book – but my year of intermittent fasting has taught me a few more subtle things that might help anyone trying the plan for the first time.

First, be kind to yourself. For me, the main psychological advantage of the Fast Diet – and the key that differentiates it from conventional diet plans – is that it is never about admonishment. It shouldn’t feel like an unending slog, or a continual nagging in the gut that says you should be eating less, doing more. It will work best if you allow yourself to be human, slip up, make mistakes – always knowing that tomorrow is another day. Flexibility is built in: choose your Fast Days, adapt the diet to suit your diary, stop if it doesn’t feel right, start again when it does – thinking of it as a broad, on-going lifestyle change, not a daily drudge.

Second, do (however) stick to your targets and exercise willpower. On the days which you have designated as Fast Days, do try to be a bit tougher on yourself. Hunger is a canny beast, and you will certainly encounter it if you’re only eating a quarter of your usual calorie intake on any given day. So, use your mind to master your appetite. Keep busy. Stay engaged. Share your day with a Fast Buddy (or this forum). Try hard to stick to the calorie quota, but don’t dwell on it too much. Demote eating on those particular days and find something else to occupy your mind.

Third, know that fasting (like anything at all) gets easier as it becomes a habit. Week four will be easier than week one. Week six will almost certainly be easier still, particularly if you’re seeing a shift on the scales. Plenty of people report that they come to enjoy their Fast Days. OK, so that may sound like baloney if you’re only just setting off on this journey, but there’s something galvanising and strengthening about understanding your appetite, embracing the odd period of hunger, eating well, with thought and application rather than simply shovelling in whatever comes to hand.

So, stay committed, stay light, stay strong. After all, it’s not for long. And do let us know how you get on. Mimi x

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What a year it’s been! The Fast Diet has, much to our surprise and delight, become part of the national conversation – one of those instantly recognisable titles that became a buzz-phrase of the year. Michael and I have had an incredible 12 months since the book was first published. I remember being with friends in the sticks of Somerset last New Year’s Eve and watching it climb, bit by bit, up the Amazon chart. At 2am, having had a cup or two of wine, my mates all decided to buy a copy to see if it affected the rankings. It didn’t. But we sold an extra 17 copies just to prove a point! Since then, the Fast Diet has held fast at the top of the charts, ending the year, remarkably, as Amazon’s best-selling book, and back in the top ten as we tumble into 2014. That’s great, but the real story – the thing that makes us both tick – is the countless individuals who have lost impressive amounts of weight on the Fast Diet. Some have succeeded in spectacular fashion, others have found the going tough; many have found support and encouragement on this site. We’re still only just beginning to discover why the 5:2 method works so well for some – and we really enjoy reading and hearing stories from Fast Dieters around the globe. Thank you for your commitment and your enthusiasm, good luck to all those about to embark, and huge congratulations to all those who’ve hit their target weight this year.

And so to 2014… Michael’s new book, Fast Exercise, comes out in the next few days – it’s a great companion to the Fast Diet and offers a similarly radical approach: add a few minutes of high intensity exercise to your weekly 5:2 plan and you’ll maximise your health, fitness and well-being in the year ahead. My new book, Fast Cook, is published in early spring – a collection of simple, satisfying, satiating and distinctly yummy recipes to get you through your Fast Days with ease (with really lovely pictures too – thanks Romas!) But for now, we raise a glass to you all. Happy New Year. Let’s make it a good one.

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Hot. Hot hot hot. Never thought I’d say that, but the last couple of weeks have been baking in Britain; only now are we seeing the break in the weather, though summer looks all set to resume soon. Like many people, I find fasting on these warmer days so much easier – not only are the fresh summer ingredients perfect for Fast Day dishes, the heat also takes the edge of an appetite. I never really hunger for carbs and cake when the temperature rises – just ice lollies (homemade, so you can gauge the sugar content) and salads and barbecued fish, shrimp, chicken, veggies…

As you might expect, the Recipe book has tons of inspiration for low-cal summer suppers. My favourite at the moment is the Ceviche with tomato and coriander – a real zinger of a dish, super fresh, lime-kissed and pretty as a picture (and here’s the picture!). Just add a fork.

Another firm favourite in our house is the Szechuan chicken salad – a cool citrusy combo of cucumber, herbs, and iceberg that I find myself craving day in day out, Fast Day or not. No need for carbs, I promise you.

And I made the (super-simple) Bagna Cauda again for friends the other day – a glorious heap of griddled vegetables (aubergine, peppers, courgettes, broccoli, fennel, the lot) served with an Italian dipping sauce made from anchovies and garlic.

 An acquired taste, perhaps – but once acquired, hard to shake off!

I’m off to Provence next month, where I expect I’ll gather inspiration for more summertime recipes – preferably ones that don’t involve bread or cheese or charcuterie or any of the usual French basics… I’ll be steering clear. Well, for two days of the week, at least.

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Michael and Mimi are loving this. Too lazy to read the book? Here’s The Fast Guide to the Fast Diet by Kevin Partner. (We think you should still buy the book though. At least the recipe book.)

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My father has lost a grand total 36 pounds on The Fast Diet (so far). This is an astounding, life-changing achievement and I am hugely proud of him.

Here’s what he says about it (and I really think he’d say this even if we weren’t related!): ‘The point is, it’s just so easy. It’s not like dieting at all. I have a selection of four or five different dishes which I have on Fast Days… and I like all of them!  And my need to snack on non-fast days has disappeared too.  In the 6 months since New Year I can only remember being hungry once.’

I remember years of bugging him to lose weight, worrying about his blood pressure, his knees, his heart. Now, there’s a true lightness in his step and he looks fit as a fiddle. Here’s his Before and After pics (he had to be persuaded to let me have the Before…)

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Lots of buzz about at the moment around ‘demi-veg’ and part-time vegetarians (or ‘flexitarians’ – one of those clunky words that may well never take off, even if the activity does). Last week, the International Development Committee pointed to increased meat consumption as a catalyst for recent global food crises. And we all know that too much meat (particularly of the processed variety) is linked to all kinds of health issues. One recent European study found that the biggest consumers of processed meat increased their risk of death from heart disease by 72% and cancer by 11%. The World Cancer Research Fund advises limiting intake of red meat because of its links to bowel cancer. By contrast, a six-year study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association and reported in the London Evening Standard found that ‘the mortality rate among vegetarians was 12 per cent lower than in omnivores, while demi-veggies had an 8 per cent lower death rate than meat eaters’.

This really is food for thought – and it fits in neatly with The Fast Diet mantra of ‘mostly Plants and Protein’. Filling your plate with veg at the expense of meat, even for two days a week, could have a significant effect on your health, your waistline, your pocket and – yes – the planet. As Einstein once said, ‘Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.’

Perhaps full-time vegetarianism is too seismic a shift for some of us, but we could all do with moving towards more plant proteins, legumes, herbs, veggies. And, really, there’s no sacrifice. A veg-based meal relies on spicing, texture, colour, crunch – and once you’re in the zone, it’s not so hard to come up with great meatless meals (there are tons of ideas in The Fast Diet Recipe Book of course). I had lunch at Ottolenghi in Notting Hill a fortnight ago: bliss on a plate, and no meat, not a sausage. As the Standard says, maybe it’s time to join the vegolution?

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OK, so some of us just can’t be buzzed to cook on a Fast Day (me too, despite having written the Recipe Book!) I’ve just discovered the perfect Fast Day takeaway supper at my local independent grocery store. The place has a Middle Eastern flavour – lots of dates and pittas and fat fruit piled high. They do a great little Mezze boxes (see photo) with plenty of tabouleh, butter bean salad, a little falafel, a spoon of couscous, hummus, cherry tomatoes, tons of herbs. It’s a taste sensation, full of good things, low in calories (I’d guess around 350), high in fibre. Basically, a Fast Day winner, and all for £1.99! Bingo.

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Gratified to hear that the stars of Coronation Street are doing well on The Fast Diet. One of the most interesting quotes to emerge in the press this week was from Cherylee Houston, who plays Owen’s daughter Izzy. She has been on the diet for six weeks and is finding real success with it. According to The Sun, ‘Cherylee, who uses a wheelchair, has a form of the rare painful tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and finds the diet helps manage her pain… Says Cherylee: ‘When I looked back I realised the fasting had changed my pain pattern a lot, which is amazing…’

It’s something that Michael and I alluded to in the first book, and a subject which is of increasing interest. Michael says: ‘Studies show that intermittent fasting leads to reduced production of so-called inflammatory factors and that may be one reason why it may help with a range of conditions from arthritis to asthma . There is also some evidence (mainly animal, but human studies have begun) that within a couple of weeks your brain starts to produce a protein called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor in response to intermittent fasting and that helps improve mood, which may also be helping.’

We are very interested to hear your stories about the effects of intermittent fasting. Has it improved your chronic pain? Do let us know.

Beyond pain relief, Cherylee says she’s feeling more energetic on the Fast Diet too: ‘The diet is about allowing your body to replenish itself,’ she says. ‘Our bodies weren’t really designed to eat three times a day continually. We need down time. And what everybody is saying is that, after they’ve done it for a couple of weeks, they get more energy.’ We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

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Hi Michael

I want you to know that The Fast Diet has been life changing for me.  Before I started the diet I lived a moderately active lifestyle- going to the gym a couple of times a week and running now and then but my weight just wouldn’t reduce.  In fact it steadily creeped up until I found that I had hit 105kg (230lb).  I’m 42 years old and 185cm tall (6’1″).  I was quite distressed to find that this put me comfortably into the ‘obese’ BMI range.

After watching Eat, Fast and Live Longer I decided that this was a diet I could employ, I’ve got a wife and two young daughters who need their father around and so the additional health benefits with lower cholesterol, lower IGF1 and the potential protection against dementia seemed compelling.  I’ve been on the diet since I saw your show and with the odd blip during holidays and long overseas travel I have stayed on it.  In fact it isn’t my diet, it’s my way of life now.

So to my results.  Since starting the diet I’ve lost 15.5kg (36lb) in weight, dropping to 89.5kg and I’m now just a couple of kilos from my target weight.  My waist has gone from 37″ to 33″ and I’ve lost an inch and a half off my collar.  My running times have improved (32 mins for a 6km lunchtime run) and I can squat an 80kg barbell so I don’t see any evidence of loss of muscle mass.  My wife is enjoying similar (though not quite so dramatic) results and I have become a bit of an evangalist for the diet.

I’m a consultant medical product designer and I’m involved in helping to develop products for diabetes care, amoungst other diseases.  Knowing that this lifestyle is giving me the best possible protection from developing this diabetes and many other complications of getting older gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Please feel free to use any of the photos I’ve attached.  (If you’re wondering about the dog food shot, that sack of dog food is how much weight I’ve lost so far.)

Regards

SA

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One of the reasons The Fast Diet seems to have become so popular is that it is incredibly easy to thread into a life. The psychology of intermittent fasting is its USP: no two days are the same. There’s no drudge of daily dieting. It is a part-time commitment for a full-blown result.
It seems to me that the 5:2 method is so appealing that it could easily be applied to other areas of life. There’s something really pleasing about the ratio. It feels like just enough, but never too much. 5:2 feels feasible, a comfortable compromise that gets results. By the time the next Fast Day rolls around, you’re ready for more. So how about going beyond diet? A 5:2 regime for other things, other activities beyond mealtimes: two days a week, we could ditch the car. Or play squash. Two days a week, we could switch off the TV, or eat as a family, or practice yoga, or walk to work. We could steer clear or meat, or stop drinking wine. For two days a week, anything is possible, right?

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The Bookseller reports that The Fast Diet has now spent its 19th consecutive week at number one in the UK Paperback Non-fiction chart – ‘the first title to enjoy such extraordinary longevity since Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution 10 years ago.’ Michael and I are overjoyed at the success of the diet, and how so many people are gaining real benefit from it – losing weight, finding fitness, discovering a new way of eating that is low-key, sustainable and (can it be true?) fun. Even JLo has been on the 5:2. You’re certainly in good company.

I was travelling recently in Morocco, and even there, the diet seems to be causing a buzz. People are talking about it, sharing stories, proud of their achievements, swapping tips, sharing plans. In the coming months, the book will be published in more than 20 new territories – it’s already out in the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Korea – so welkom, benvenuto, powitanie, dobrodošli, добре дошъл, bun venit and hwan-yeong to you all (with apologies for poor spelling!) Please join in the conversation and let us know your stories from around the world.

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This is a photo I saw on the wall of my mother’s house taken a couple of years ago when I was about 188 lbs. My wife Clare took the other photo this evening. I am wearing the same shirt but am now 168 lbs. I’d love to see how you’re doing. If you’d like, post your story or send in your before and after photos to stories@thefastdiet.co.uk and we’ll put some up on the site. Good luck with the diet. Michael

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The official Fast Diet forums are now open for discussion. As Michael says, “We have a well informed and supportive community who will encourage you on your way and throw in some of the latest research to keep you motivated.” So pull up a chair, have a cup of tea (I’m having mine black, it’s a fast day) and let’s chat.

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As time goes on and the Fast Diet message spreads, we hear news of all kinds of people reading the books, embarking on the diet and finding fantastic success with it. As I wrote recently in my You Magazine column, ‘thousands of people have tried the Fast Diet, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the newsroom at the BBC, and, I’m told, Miranda Kerr. I’m also told that Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Beyoncé and Christie Turlington are giving it a go, but I doubt it – chiefly because if I believed they were, I would explode with excitement and require resuscitation with abucket of cold water and a sharp slap to the face. Still. I have had triumphant messages from cardiovascular surgeons, parish priests, two headmistresses, one traffic cop, seven shop assistants, three staff nurses and a woman I bumped into at the chiropodist…’

The latest additions to the roll call include both the food editor and the wine editor at The Guardian (‘a diet for foodies,’ as Felicity Cloake put it in her column), plus Benedict Cumerbatch who told The Times at the weekend: ‘I am on the 5:2 diet. You have to, for Sherlock.’ We hear on the grapevine that Sir Mervyn King is a fan too, while Phillip Schofield is on it and apparently grappling with his hunger, as we all do in the early stages. Even Kate Middleton’s uncle is giving it a go out in Spain: as the Telegraph reported, he recently said, ‘Managed a starvation day yesterday on sub 300 calories and I can feel it’s fallen off me, like my hair… Fat day today, 5-2 diet under way.’ Looks like the diet has truly broad appeal!

More important than any newsworthy devotee is that the diet is making a real difference to the lives of so many. Thank you for all your stories and tips – keep them coming in. I was out at a friend’s house for supper on Saturday, and 7 of the 8 guests were on the Fast Diet. We discussed it at length while getting through tons of delicious French cheese, a fabulous dark chocolate cake and plenty of red wine (for them, not me!). Which just goes to show that Felicity is right: this really is a diet for foodies. You CAN have your cake and eat it. I had mine with a dollop of cream… But we’re all fasting today. It is Monday, after all.

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Easy. I knew it would be as soon as the sun came out. Fasting in the depths of winter, as we’ve all established, can be tough-going, requiring every last ounce of will power when hunger strikes. If all you really want to do is to cuddle up and snuggle down, your mind easily turns to filling, warming, wondrous food. Personally, I can dwell for a good long time on the glories of a jacket potato with butter and cheese… or a big roast with every trimming in the book. Hopefully, the intermittent nature of the Fast Diet – only two days, only two days – was enough to get us through those long cold months.

Now, things are far simpler. Salad days! It’s super-simple to cook on a Fast Day if the sun is dipping on the horizon and the barbecue is smoking in the yard. A piece of grilled fish, a spice-rubbed chicken breast, a skewer of lemony prawns – all of these things make a great back bone for a lo-cal al fresco supper. Add heaps of herbs and leaves, or a mound of char-grilled vegetables, and you’ve got the perfect fasting feast right there (look in the cook book for loads of inspiration: my favourite part of the book is the ‘Flavour Saviour’ section, last chapter, which has rubs, relishes and tangy, zingy sauces galore). We would love to hear your Fast Day BBQ recipes if you get a mo. Roll on summer, mark off those Fast Days and bring on the swimsuits!

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At last, a few rays of sun arrive – and with them the first Fast Diet spring. When Michael and I started work on The Fast Diet back in October, the weather in the UK was already cold and gloomy, which, even with the best will in  the world, made eating on a Fast Day something of a challenge. British food in winter tends to rely on filling meals, on pies and stews and dumplings and potatoes – all delicious, but hardly ticking any boxes for Fast Days. But that’s all changing with the season: warmer weather means that eating and cooking plenty of protein and plants – the good old Fast Day mantra – is suddenly so much easier.

Next week sees the arrival of the Fast Diet Recipe Book – it’s already being dispatched by Amazon, so some of you will have got your copies. As you’ll see, each recipe is carefully calorie counted and nutritionally balanced – thanks to our resident nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker. There are tons of great low-calorie recipes for winter evenings, but you’ll also find lots of the ideas that are perfect for summer nights: plenty of fish, tasty salads, lots of light veggie dishes which are easy to prepare and delicious to eat, ideal for a Fast Day, but just as good on any day of the week. The American edition of the cook book comes out in a couple of months, and all of the recipes will have been translated into US measurements. We hope you enjoy it and that it helps make all your Fast Days a breeze.

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While many people have found that they easily adapt to the 5:2 Fast Diet, others find it more challenging. If you persist it will work. If you are sticking to your normal diet on the other 5 days, then what you are doing is reducing your total calorie intake for the week by around 3000 calories. This translates to the loss of around 1lb of fat a week.

1. If you want to lose weight faster, or have hit a plateau, then you might want to consider doing Alternate Day Fasting, which I have written about in the book. As the name implies, with ADF you cut your calories to ¼ of their normal level (ie 500 for women, 600 for men), every other day. On your non-fast days you should eat normally, though in some of the trials that have been done on ADF the volunteers were actually allowed to eat pretty much what they wanted and still lose weight. Studies on people doing ADF have shown that, on average, they tend to lose around 2lbs a week, most of it fat. Some more, some less. You don’t want to obsess about weight. What you really want to do is lose fat, preferably around the gut. I always encourage people, before they start, to measure their girth (around the belly button), and monitor the change over a period of time.
2. Look at the calories you are getting from drinks on your non fast days. Juices, lattes, alcohol, fizzy drinks, smoothies all contain a lot of calories. If you can move to drinking more water and sugar free tea/coffee that will help. Calories you drink do not satiate. If you eat three apples they will fill you up. Drink 3 apples in form of a small fruit juice and it will not fill you up.
3. Simply moving more will help. I always take the stairs, even up 7 flights. Get a pedometer. Aim to do 10,000 steps a day. Most people do less than 5000. A long term study on people who lost weight and kept it off found that those who were successful all increased the amounts they walked.
4. Keep a diary of everything you eat or drink for a week.  Then look at the calorie content. Some foods may leap out. I was horrified to discover a muffin can be anywhere between 300-600 calories. Lots of evidence that people who keep an honest diary lose more weight
5. If you cut your calories 2 days a week, don’t overcompensate on the other days and keep reasonably active then you will lose fat. Unfortunately fat is incredibly energy dense, which is why for some people the process can be frustratingly slow.

I wish you all the best and let us know how you get on.

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Easter has come and gone and with it rather more Easter eggs than I had intended. I start off each year thinking that I will eat just a small amount and every year I end up wolfing down far more than is healthy. Why do we have this tradition of chocolate eggs at Easter? Apparently one reason is symbolic. The hard shell of the egg symbolize the sealed tomb which encased Christ; cracking the egg is like cracking the tomb, a celebration of the Resurrection.

Unfortunately, while eating real eggs is pretty healthy, as they are packed full of vitamins and high quality protein, the same is not true of chocolate ones. I would probably feel better about myself if I had eaten eggs made from dark chocolate, since there are some health benefits to eating the dark stuff (including a slight lowering of blood pressure), but the truth is most of what I ate was milk chocolate. Fat and sugar. Sigh. Ah well, tomorrow is a fast day…

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As readers of The Fast Diet know, the very best drink on a Fast Day is water – plenty of it, still or sparkling, with nothing added save an ice cube (if the weather ever improves enough to warrant it!). A lemon or lime slice can be nice. If you are looking for flavour, go for herbal tea, green tea, black tea and black coffee – if you add milk, the stealth calories soon add up.

Fruit juice and smoothies, though considered a ‘healthy’ option, in fact contain a lot of fruit sugars and are no replacement for eating the whole fruit, particularly on a Fast Day, when you are looking to avoid anything that will lead to an unwelcome spike in your blood sugars.

Lots of people have asked about The Fast Diet position on fizzy drinks. ‘Full-fat’ sodas are, of course, stacked with sugar – up to 10 teaspoons per can – so it’s no surprise that they should be avoided on a Fast Day. Diet sodas generally rely on aspartame or sucralose for their sweetness. There is some concern about the effects of these intense sweeteners on appetite and gut bacteria, and one study recently linked aspartame with certain blood cancers in men (though not in women).

The answer is that there is no clear answer on diet soda, at least not yet – so exercise caution. If a Diet Coke gets you through a Fast Day, fine. But limit your consumption over the course of a week. And if you’re reaching for the can time and again, reach for the tap too, whenever you can.

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As we say in the book, it’s important to find a pattern that works for you when it comes to the timetable you decide to use when eating on a Fast Day.

My method is to wake up on a Fast Day morning and have breakfast of around 300 calories at about 7am, before going to work. Then I drink lots of calorie-free fluid but go without food until 7pm, when I have a 300 calorie supper with my family (I eat the 300 calories, they tend to eat rather more).

I think of it is as ‘a day of fasting’. This makes it straightforward to explain and understand. However, as some of you have pointed out,  if you eat supper at 7pm on the night before a Fast and then have a normal breakfast on the day after a Fast, you can argue that you are actually eating 600 calories over the course of 36 hours (7pm Fast Day 1 until 7am two days later).

If, however, you decide to fast from 2pm until 2pm, as some fasters do, you would have a normal lunch on Day 1, then a 300 calorie supper on Day 1 and a 300 calorie breakfast on Day 2.  If you have a normal lunch on Day 2 this would be a 24-hour fast, full stop.  You can, of course, decide to skip lunch on Day 2 and wait till supper to break your fast.

On the 2pm-2pm method, because your fasting window is diminished, your overall weekly calorie count will probably be higher than with the 7am-7am method. You will probably lose weight more slowly.

Some people find it hard to sleep when they are hungry and for them a 7pm to 7pm method might be easier. That way you never go to bed hungry. Again weight loss will be slower. Also, here are some great suggestions from Twitter about dealing with nighttime hunger, if you’d like to look at those. If one routine doesn’t suit you, try another. Flexibility (within the basic parameters) is key – do let us know what works for you.

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So, Easter is on its way, with its glorious high-calorie promise of holiday bingeing and general excess. I must confess that I have never really been one for Lent; as with dieting, giving up something entirely – especially chocolate – is not my style. Over the course of my 20-year career, I have in fact been emphatically anti-diets, so it may seem odd that I have now written a book devoted to one. It’s no U-turn; The Fast Diet, co-written with Dr Michael Mosley, works so brilliantly because you don’t have to give anything up at all. You eat absolutely normally for five days a week and only restrict calories (to a quarter of your usual intake) on two days. So come Easter Sunday, I’ll be eating the kids’ chocolate eggs, just as I do every year. And on Easter Monday (or even Tuesday, if I fancy a little bank holiday indulgence) I will return, guilt free, to my bi-weekly 500-calorie fast.

It is times like Easter that illustrate why the Fast Diet has been so well received. In just two months, we have garnered a huge following and it is the diet’s flexibility that seems to be the key to its success: most of the time, there are no awkward dinner-party clichés (‘just salad, dressing on the side – I’m on a diet’), no need to be the dull colleague passing on post-work drinks, no need to count or fret. The diet works because you know that tomorrow you can have that glass of chardonnay/roast dinner/chocolate muffin. If you have ever struggled with the strictures of conventional, every-day dieting, it’s a liberating thought.

The book has now reached number 1 bestselling status on both sides of the Atlantic, which is hugely exciting for Michael and me. While the science is still young, the research is mounting and the results impressive. Some of the most common questions we get are about what to eat on the Fast Days; for this reason we are publishing a comprehensive Fast Diet Recipe Book on May 2, including plenty of information about how the method works, together with more than 180 meal ideas, rich in protein and complex carbs, so you won’t find yourself flagging on a Fast Day. This Lent, I reckon we can all have our cake and eat it.

You can read Mimi’s blog on Huffington Post today

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Well, Good Morning America! The Fast Diet is now on sale in the States, and – incredibly – has immediately shot to number 2 in the Amazon book charts. We’ve been waiting a while to get the Intermittent Fasting message to a wider, international audience – and this marks the beginning of that project. Michael has been on ABC’s Good Morning America today (among other things, he served up some of the recipes from our new cookbook), and The New York Times is set to run a comprehensive feature on the Fast Diet this coming Sunday.

So, a warm welcome to you all. We hope you like what you see, and that your experiences will mirror the success stories we’ve been hearing here since the New Year. We’re fascinated to learn how the Fast Diet format will translate to other territories, and hope that a new American audience will discover the simplicity and benefits of the 5:2 method, as so many of us in the UK have done. Please let us know how your fasting days go – keep us in the loop.

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I recently read a comment in a newspaper by obesity researcher Professor Lau from the University of Calgary. He made the point that “muscle protein breakdown occurs in the first 24 hours of starvation,” and expressed concern that people who fast may be losing crucial muscle mass.

My response to this is that he is really talking about long term fasting, ie fasting for days or weeks at a time. With intermittent fasting you are not fasting for 24 hours or longer. In the version that I practice, I never go more than 12 hours without eating. If your protein intake is adequate, and we actually recommend an increased protein intake on fasting days, then you are not going to get “muscle protein breakdown”. In fact the evidence from human studies clearly point towards intermittent fasting being better than standard diets when it comes to muscle preservation.

Dr Krista Varady of the University of Illinois at Chicago has done a number of human trials using intermittent fasting. Her most recent paper was in, Metabolism, Volume 62, Issue 1, Pages 137-143, January 2013. In this study thirty-two overweight volunteers, average age 42, were put on an ADF (alternate day) intermittent fast for 8 weeks. At the end of 8 weeks the volunteers had lost an average of 4kg and seen significant improvements in biomarkers related to the risks of diabetes and coronary heart disease.  Interestingly, the weight loss was all fat, not muscle. As she points out “A similar preservation of lean mass was noted in a previous ADF study conducted by our group.” This retention of lean mass, ie muscle, is not seen with standard calorie restricted diets. “The reason why ADF may assist with the preservation of lean mass is not known at present, but will undoubtedly be of interest in future studies in this field”

In another study of intermittent fasting (Int J Obes . 2011 May;35(5):714-27), 107 young overweight women were randomly allocated to either a standard low calorie diet or a diet where for two days a week they ate 650 calories a day. At the end of 6 months the intermittent fasting group had lost an average of 6 kg of fat and 3 inches from their waists compared to 4.9 kg of fat and 2 inches from waist for the normal dieters.

Doing the diet, I have now lost just over 22lbs and my body fat is down from 28% to under 20%. I walk everywhere and do 30 press ups each morning. Keeping muscle mass is important, not just because it looks better but also because muscle is more metabolically active than fat; it burns calories even when you are asleep. Rest assured, the diet will keep you healthy as well as help you lose weight.

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