My first leap into fasting, and blogging at the same time! A momentous day.
Inspied by the recent Horizon program featuring Michael Moseley I have decided to try the 5:2 diet. I am not a traditional dieter, I have never been on a diet as such. Generally whenever I think that I ought to eat a bit less I immediately eat everything in sight in a panic. I hate the idea of restricting what I eat on a daily basis – I love good food and enjoy my wine, probably eat more snacks and junk food than is good for me, but overall food is one of the big pleasures in my life and the idea of permanently cutting down is quite frankly depressing.
However, I weighed myself this morning and I am 13stone 6 (188lbs). I am nearly 6ft tall, so this does not make me massively overweight. I have a BMI of 26.2. I have always been slim, but since my second child I have put on nearly 2 stone and I can feel it. I’d like to get rid of in whilst still in my 30s and able to. So that’s my goal – a weight of 11stone 7 (161lbs) and a BMI of 22.5. Hopefully a healthy, sensible target.
So the Horizon 5:2 thing inspired me because it does not involve traditional dieting, daily calorie counting, eating mostly protein, no carbs, cabbage soup or any other dieting horrors. The premise is simple. Fast for 2 days, eat normally for 5. On the fasting days you are allowed 20% of your normal calorie allowance, so for me, that is a mere 500. Not much, but enough. You can do the fasting days anytime you like in the week. I am going to do them consecutively, on Mondays and Tuesdays to get them out of the way. Then I can go back to normality, safe in the knowledge that my overall calorie intake will be down for the week by about 23%.
In addition to losing weight, there were lots of science facts in the program about how fasting can reduce your likelihood of developing chronic diseases as you get older, and also dementia. I wont go into the science things as you can google it but they were very interesting, although not backed up by many clinical trials.
So, I’m going to give it a go. Michael Mosely thought it was worth doing, so I will try it and see. I am writing this blog for anyone else interested in my experiment, or who wants to do it along with me! Wish me luck……
Happy blogging!
letstryfasting 