The 5:2 Diet

Most commonly known as The 5:2 Diet, but also known as Intermittent Fasting, the FastDiet and a few other names. I’ve personally been calling it The Zen Diet, because of the calm state reached on diet days. There are a lot of wild misconceptions over what this lifestyle change is all about. It’s not some crazy fad, it’s not starving and it’s not really fasting at all. I’ve seen dozens of people read the word “fast” and without reading any further, assume that you quit eating 2 days a week. That’s not it at all. That would be really bad.

To put it super simple, you diet 2 days and eat like normal 5 days, every single week. The diet days fall on two nonconsecutive days. You pick what works for you each week. Maybe Monday and Thursday work one week, and Tuesday Friday works the next. No pressure to stick to certain days.

For women, you cut down to 500 calories, and for men 600 calories, on diet days. That’s it. Ridiculously simple. You can work out the diet days to fit your eating needs. Some people choose to eat a light breakfast and a light dinner, some choose to eat 5 light 100 calorie meals throughout the day. On days off, you eat a normal 2000 calories. You can still have your cheese and glasses of wine. You can still live like usual.

You absolutely can create your own foods, or pick up healthy things out and about. You don’t have to special mail order things, make insanely complicated diet recipes with 20 ingredients and a ton of prep. You can even go super simple and pick up a couple healthy frozen meals for your diet days. For example, a medium sized banana and 5 almonds for breakfast, a Healthy Choice Slow Roasted Turkey Bake for lunch and a Healthy Choice Chicken and Potatoes meal for dinner. Voila! The perfect 500 calorie diet day. If you’re a dude, you still have room for a Healthy Choice frozen Greek Yogurt for dessert.

The thought behind this type of eating plan, is that it’s in our basic biology to have days with food and days where food is scarce. Sort of dropping back to ancestral basics. I have done a ton of research over a few week span, and am really considering giving this eating plan a try. I even tested it out last week, with my own lifestyle fitting plan, and was surprised at how incredibly easy it was. The test went amazingly well, so the next question is, should I jump in??

Besides the supposed age defying and health related benefits, to put it bluntly, this is just another way to create a calorie deficit. Another option that may work for people like me. I’m not a dieter. I can’t watch what I eat day in and day out, every day of the week, month, year. It makes me yawn and my eyes roll just thinking about going back to that type of lifestyle. I want to eat what I want to eat, when I want to eat it. I’m getting too old for that obsessive restrictive stuff. I lived that way 20 years, I’m done!

I am a healthy person. I’m in great shape, workout 5 days a week alternating circuit and cardio. Because I refuse to watch what I eat, I have about 5 pounds I would love to drop. That’s just to be at my uber fit weight. Right now I’m happy, and perfectly in my BMI, fit in my clothes, etc… but I would love to shred off 5 pounds of pure fat. It would be awesome to really show my muscle definition. That’s pretty much it. I want to look super fit, not super thin, weak and like a waif… super fit.

My worry is that through all the research, all I’ve found are people around size 12 and 14, dropping down to size 10. What about us gals that want to go from a 6 to a 4? Or from an 8 to a 6? From what I’ve read, the diet supposedly doesn’t work well for extremely active people. I’m not entirely sure why not. There is a total loss of info on that particular topic. You’re creating a calorie deficit, it all adds up mathematically by weeks end. Why if you’re active wouldn’t it work?

So my final question is this >>> If you have considered this diet, have used it in the past, are currently on it, know someone, etc… email me. I’d love to hear your results, your friend’s results. I’m super curious. What are your thoughts?