Brace yourselves. A new diet is going viral, because that’s what diets do now. Sugar-free, anyone?
Tellingly, it’s called “The Fast Diet” and it comes from a new book written by Dr Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer. Dr Mosley is a medical journalist and Mimi Spencer is a food and fashion writer.
Both are from the UK, where their book has been a number-one bestseller for weeks.
The Fast Diet is also known as the 5:2 diet. It involves five days of normal eating, and two days of fasting. According to the authors, the two (non-consecutive) days of fasting per week will result in the metabolism working harder on the days you DON’T fast. This is intended to result in weight loss and general better health all round.
This from the Fast Diet website:
That’s five days of normal eating, with little thought to calorie control and a slice of pie for pudding if that’s what you want. Then, on the other two (non-consecutive) days, you just eat a quarter of your recommended daily calorie quota. That works out at 500 calories for women and 600 for men.
To give you a bit of an idea about how far those 500 calories could stretch: one medium banana has about 100 calories. One orange also has about 100. There are about 250 calories alone in a cup of plain cooked pasta. Add a bit of sauce and cheese and you’ve probably reached your limit for the day.
Normal daily intake for a woman is 2000 calories. So you’re basically cutting your recommended food intake by 75 per cent. Feeling hungry yet?