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The FastDiet - Revised & Updated: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting by [Dr Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer]

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The FastDiet - Revised & Updated: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting Kindle Edition

by Dr Michael Mosley (Author), Mimi Spencer (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The #1 New York Times bestseller

Is it possible to eat normally, five days a week, and become slimmer and healthier as a result?

Simple answer: yes. You just limit your calorie intake for two nonconsecutive days each week—500 calories for women, 600 for men. You’ll lose weight quickly and effortlessly with the FastDiet.

Scientific trials of intermittent fasters have shown that it will not only help the pounds fly off, but also reduce your risk of a range of diseases from diabetes to cardiovascular disease and even cancer. “The scientific evidence is strong that intermittent fasting can improve health,” says Dr. Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences, National Institute on Aging, and Professor of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University.

This book brings together the results of new, groundbreaking research to create a dietary program that can be incorporated into your busy daily life, featuring:

• Forty 500- and 600-calorie meals that are quick and easy to make
• 8 pages of photos that show you what a typical “fasting meal” looks like
• The cutting-edge science behind the program
• A calorie counter that makes dieting easy
• And much more.

Far from being just another fad, the FastDiet is a radical new way of thinking about food, a lifestyle choice that could transform your health. This is your indispensable guide to simple and effective weight loss, without fuss or the need to endlessly deprive yourself.

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248 pages
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February 26, 2013
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr Michael Mosley is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The FastDiet, FastExercise, FastLife, The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, The Clever Gut Diet, The Fast 800 Diet, and Covid-19. Dr. Mosley trained to be a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London before joining the BBC, where he spent three decades as a science journalist and executive producer. Now freelance, he is a well-known television personality and has won numerous television awards, including an RTS (Royal Television Award), and was named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association.

Mimi Spencer is a feature writer, columnist, and the author of 101 Things to Do Before You Diet.

From the Artist

Dr. Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

"A health revolution."

Source: New York Times

“Fans of the FastDiet report becoming radically healthier by fasting two days a week.” Source: Good Morning America

“The biggest diet revolution since Atkins.” Source: Daily Mail

“The only diet you'll ever need.” Source: Mail on Sunday --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Dr. Michael Mosley is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The FastDiet, FastExercise, FastLife, and The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet, and The Clever Gut Diet. Dr. Mosley trained to be a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London before joining the BBC, where he spent three decades as a science journalist and executive producer. Now freelance, he is a well-known television personality and has won numerous television awards, including an RTS (Royal Television Award), and was named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association.

Mimi Spencer is a feature writer, columnist, and the author of 101 Things to Do Before You Diet. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Fast Diet

Introduction

OVER THE LAST FEW DECADES, FOOD FADS HAVE come and gone, but the standard medical advice on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle has stayed much the same: eat low-fat foods, exercise more . . . and never, ever skip meals. Over that same period, levels of obesity worldwide have soared.

So is there a different evidence-based approach? One that relies on science, not opinion? Well, we think there is: intermittent fasting.

There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.

When we first read about the alleged benefits of intermittent fasting, we, like many, were skeptical. Fasting seemed drastic, difficult—and we both knew that dieting of any description is generally doomed to fail. But now that we’ve looked at it in depth and tried it ourselves, we are convinced of its remarkable potential. As one of the medical experts interviewed for this book puts it: “There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.”

Fasting: An Ancient Idea, a Modern Method

Fasting is nothing new. As we’ll discover in the next chapter, your body is designed to fast. We evolved at a time when food was scarce; we are the product of millennia of feast or famine. The reason we respond so well to intermittent fasting may be because it mimics, far more accurately than three meals a day, the environment in which modern humans were shaped.

Fasting, of course, remains an article of faith for many. The fasts of Lent, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan are just some of the better-known examples. Greek Orthodox Christians are encouraged to fast for 180 days of the year (according to Saint Nikolai of Zicha, “Gluttony makes a man gloomy and fearful, but fasting makes him joyful and courageous”), while Buddhist monks fast on the new moon and full moon of each lunar month.

Many more of us, however, seem to be eating most of the time. We’re rarely ever hungry. But we are dissatisfied. With our weight, our bodies, our health.

Intermittent fasting can put us back in touch with our human selves. It is a route not only to weight loss, but also to long-term health and well-being. Scientists are only just beginning to discover and prove how powerful a tool it can be.

This book is a product of those scientists’ cutting-edge investigations and their impact on our current thinking about weight loss, disease resistance, and longevity. But it is also the result of our personal experiences.

Both are relevant here—the lab and the lifestyle—so we investigate intermittent fasting from two complementary perspectives. First, Michael, who used his body and medical training to test its potential, explains the scientific foundations of intermittent fasting (IF) and the 5:2 diet—something he brought to the world’s attention during the summer of 2012.

Then Mimi offers a practical guide on how to do it safely, effectively, and in a sustainable way, a way that will fit easily into your normal everyday life. She looks in detail at how fasting feels, what you can expect from day to day, what to eat, and when to eat, and provides a host of tips and strategies to help you gain the greatest benefit from the diet’s simple precepts.

As you’ll see below, the FastDiet has changed both of our lives. We hope it will do the same for you.

Michael’s Motivation: A Male Perspective

I am a 55-year-old male, and before I embarked on my exploration of intermittent fasting, I was mildly overweight: at five feet, eleven inches, I weighed around 187 pounds and had a body mass index of 26, which put me into the overweight category. Until my midthirties, I had been slim, but like many people I then gradually put on weight, around one pound a year. This doesn’t sound like much, but over a couple of decades it pushed me up and up. Slowly I realized that I was starting to resemble my father, a man who struggled with weight all his life and died in his early seventies of complications associated with diabetes. At his funeral many of his friends commented on how like him I had become.

While making a documentary for the BBC, I was fortunate enough to have an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan done. This revealed that I am a TOFI—thin on the outside, fat inside. This visceral fat is the most dangerous sort of fat, because it wraps itself around your internal organs and puts you at risk for heart disease and diabetes. I later had blood tests that showed I was heading toward diabetes, and had a cholesterol score that was also way too high. Obviously, I was going to have to do something about this. I tried following standard advice, except it made little difference. My weight and blood profile remained stuck in the “danger ahead” zone.

I had never tried dieting before because I’d never found a diet that I thought would work. I’d watched my father try every form of diet, from Scarsdale through Atkins, from the Cambridge Diet to the Drinking Man’s Diet. He’d lost weight on each one of them, and then within a few months put it all back on, and more.

Then, at the beginning of 2012, I was approached by Aidan Laverty, editor of the BBC science series Horizon, who asked if I would like to put myself forward as a guinea pig to explore the science behind life extension. I wasn’t sure what we would find, but along with producer Kate Dart and researcher Roshan Samarasinghe, we quickly focused on calorie restriction and fasting as a fruitful area to explore.

Calorie restriction (CR) is pretty brutal; it involves eating an awful lot less than a normal person would expect to eat, and doing so every day of your (hopefully) long life. The reason people put themselves through this is because it is the only intervention that has been shown to extend lifespan, at least in animals. There are at least 10,000 CRONies (Calorie Restriction with Optimum Nutrition) worldwide, and I have met quite a number of them. Despite their generally fabulous biochemical profile, I have never been seriously tempted to join their skinny ranks. I simply don’t have the willpower or desire to live permanently on an extreme low-calorie diet.

So I was delighted to discover intermittent fasting (IF), which involves eating fewer calories, but only some of the time. If the science was right, it offered the benefits of CR but without the pain.

I set off around the United States, meeting leading scientists who generously shared their research and ideas with me. It became clear that IF was no fad. But it wouldn’t be as easy as I’d originally hoped. As you’ll see later in the book, there are many different forms of intermittent fasting. Some involve eating nothing for twenty-four hours or longer. Others involve eating a single, low-calorie meal once a day, every other day. I tried both but couldn’t imagine doing either on a regular basis. I found it was simply too hard.

Instead I decided to create and test my own modified version. Five days a week, I would eat normally; on the remaining two I would eat a quarter of my usual calorie intake (that is, 600 calories).

I split the 600 calories in two—around 250 calories for breakfast and 350 calories for supper—effectively fasting for around twelve hours at a stretch. I also decided to split my fasting days: I would fast on Mondays and Thursdays. I became my own experiment.

The program, Eat, Fast, Live Longer, which detailed my adventures with what we were now calling the 5:2 diet, appeared on the BBC during the London Olympics in August 2012. I expected it to be lost in the media frenzy that surrounded the Games, but instead it generated a frenzy of its own. The program was watched by more than 2.5 million people—a huge audience for Horizon—and hundreds of thousands more on YouTube. My Twitter account went into overdrive, my followers tripled; everyone wanted to try my version of intermittent fasting, and they were all asking me what they should do.

The newspapers took up the story. Articles appeared in The Times (London), the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Mail on Sunday. Before long, it was picked up by newspapers all over the world—in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Madrid, Montreal, Islamabad, and New Delhi. Online groups were created, menus and experiences swapped, chat rooms started buzzing about fasting. People began to stop me on the street and tell me how well they were doing on the 5:2 diet. They also e-mailed details of their experiences. Among those e-mails, a surprisingly large number were from doctors. Like me, they had initially been skeptical, but they had tried it for themselves, found that it worked, and had begun suggesting it to their patients. They wanted information, menus, details of the scientific research to scrutinize. They wanted me to write a book. I hedged, procrastinated, then finally found a collaborator, Mimi Spencer, whom I liked and trusted and who has an in-depth knowledge of food. Which is how what you are reading came about.

Michael’s Background

I trained as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and after passing my medical exams, I joined the BBC as a trainee assistant producer. Over the last twenty-five years, I have made numerous science and history documentaries for the BBC, first behind the camera, more recently in front. I was executive producer of QED; Trust Me, I’m a Doctor; and Superhuman. I worked with John Cleese, Jeremy Clarkson, Professor Robert Winston, Sir David Attenborough, and Professor Alice Roberts. I devised and executive-produced many programs for the BBC and the Discovery Channel, including: Pompeii: The Last Day, Supervolcano, and Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction.

As a presenter I have made a dozen series for the BBC, including Medical Mavericks, Blood and Guts, Inside Michael Mosley, Science Story, The Young Ones, Inside the Human Body, and The Truth About Exercise. I am currently making three new series, as well as being a regular science presenter for the BBC’s The One Show.

I have won numerous awards, including being named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association.

Mimi’s Motivation: A Female Perspective

I started intermittent fasting on the day I was commissioned to write a feature for The Times about Michael’s Horizon program. It was the first I’d heard of intermittent fasting, and the idea appealed immediately, even to a cynical soul who has spent two decades examining the curious acrobatics of the fashion industry, the beauty business, and the diet trade.

I’d dabbled in diets before—show me a fortysomething woman who hasn’t—losing weight, then losing faith within weeks and piling it all back on. Though never overweight, I’d long been interested in dropping that reluctant seven to ten pounds—the pounds I picked up in pregnancy and somehow never lost. The diets I tried were always too hard to follow, too complicated to implement, too boring, too tough, too single-strand, too invasive, sucking the juice out of life and leaving you with the scraps. There was nothing I found that I could adopt and thread into the context of my life—as a mother, a working woman, a wife.

I’ve argued for years that dieting is a fool’s game, doomed to fail because of the restrictions and deprivations imposed on an otherwise happy life, but this felt immediately different. The scientific evidence was extensive and compelling, and (crucially for me) the medical community was positive. The effects, for Michael and others, were impressive, startling even. In his Horizon documentary, Michael called it the “beginning of something huge . . . which could radically transform the nation’s health.” I couldn’t resist. Nor could I conceive of a reason to wait.

The scientific evidence was extensive and compelling, and (crucially for me) the medical community was positive.

In the months since I wrote the Times feature, I have remained a convert. An evangelist, actually. I’m still “on” the FastDiet now, but I barely notice it. At the outset, I weighed 132 pounds. At five feet, seven inches, my BMI was an okay 21.4. Today, as I write, I weigh 119 pounds, with a BMI of 19.4. That’s a weight off. I feel light, lean, and alive. Fasting has become part of my weekly life, something I do automatically without stressing about it.

I feel light, lean, and alive.

Six months in, I have more energy, more bounce, clearer skin, a greater zest for life. And—it has to be said—new jeans (27-inch waist) and none of my annual bikini dread as summer approaches. But perhaps more important, I know that there’s a long-term gain. I’m doing the best for my body and my brain. It’s an intimate revelation, but one worth sharing.

Mimi’s Background

I have written about fashion, food, and body shape in British national newspapers and magazines for twenty years, starting out at Vogue, followed by The Guardian, The Observer, and the London Evening Standard, where I was named British Fashion Journalist of the Year in 2000. I am currently a columnist for the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine and a regular features writer for The Saturday Times. In 2009 I wrote a book, 101 Things to Do Before You Diet, cataloguing my dismay with fad diets, which seem forever doomed to fail. Intermittent fasting is the only plan I have discovered in two decades that gets the weight off and keeps it off. And the antiaging health benefits? Gravy.

The FastDiet: The Potential, the Promise

We know that for many people, the standard diet advice simply does not work. The FastDiet is a radical alternative. It has the potential to change the way we think about eating and weight loss.

• The FastDiet demands that we think about not just what we eat, but when we eat it.

• There are no complicated rules to follow; the strategy is flexible, comprehensible, and userfriendly.

• There is no daily slog of calorie control—none of the boredom, frustration, or serial deprivation that characterizes conventional diet plans.

• Yes, it involves fasting, but not as you know it; you won’t “starve” on any given day.

• You will still enjoy the foods you love—most of the time.

• Once the weight is off, sticking to the basic program will mean that it stays off.

• Weight loss is only one benefit of the FastDiet. The real dividend is the potential long-term health gains—cutting your risk of a range of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

• You will soon come to understand that it is not a diet. It is much more than that: it is a sustainable strategy for a healthy, long life.

Now you’ll want to understand exactly how we can make these dramatic assertions. In the next chapter, Michael explains the science that makes the FastDiet tick. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

"Fans of the FastDiet report becoming radically healthier by fasting two days a week."

"The biggest diet revolution since Atkins."

"The only diet you'll ever need." --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ALYY6ZA
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Revised, Updated edition (February 26, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 26, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 14468 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 248 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #204,360 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #295 in Healthy Living
- #341 in Weight Maintenance Diets
- #354 in Weight Loss Diets (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 14,217 ratings

About the authors

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Michael Mosley
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Mimi Spencer
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Mimi's new book is The Midlife Kitchen, co-authored with Sam Rice, featuring more than 150 simple, sustaining, health-boosting recipes for Midlife and beyond.
She is best known for co-authoring the 2012 best-selling book The Fast Diet with Dr Michael Mosley, which introduced the concept of 5:2 intermittent fasting to the world. The Fast Diet has sold over 1.4 million copies worldwide, with translations into more than 30 languages, including Arabic, Hebrew and Taiwanese.
Mimi went on to write the subsequent recipe books The Fast Diet Recipe Book and Fast Cook. It was those books that developed her keen interest in nutrition and health, particularly concerning our changing requirements as the years go by - one of the main motivations for her new book The Midlife Kitchen, co authored with Sam Rice.
Mimi's background is in lifestyle and style journalism, with an early career spent in London as a fashion writer for Vogue, the Evening Standard and then as editor of ES Magazine. She went on to become a columnist on You Magazine (Mail on Sunday), Observer Food Monthly and Waitrose Kitchen, while continuing to write lifestyle, fashion and food features for The Times and many national magazines.
Mimi, 49, lives in Brighton on the south coast of England, with her husband, two teenage children and an endlessly hungry dog.
See more on the author's page

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You Don't Need To *Read* The Book, But It Helps!

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

I bought THE FAST DIET: LOSE WEIGHT, STAY HEALTHY, AND LIVE LONGER..., by Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer, for my Kindle after seeing a report about it on my local news channel (I haven't seen the documentary on this diet, also by the authors, but it's sounds interesting).

That was about 9-weeks ago and so far I've lost 10-pounds. I'm not obese, just overweight and looking to lose about 20-pounds, and so that's why I wanted to try out this diet. I quit smoking about 5-6 years ago and gained about 30-pounds after that and it's been tough trying to lose that excess weight, even though I exercise, because I love to eat.

Anyway, the book is well written, easy to read, and contains case studies and research into various diets that include some form of fasting. The authors experiment on themselves and come up with a plan that seems to work, actually be doable, and that's what they pass along to the reader.

The book also has recipes and guidelines and what to expect when you begin.

Really the plan is VERY SIMPLE: you simply fast on two non-consecutive days a week, not really fasting just eating 600 calories or less for men; 500 or less for women on those "fast" days, and eat whatever you like on the non-fast days. That's it.

So technically you don't have to read this book to get started, and you can find recipes online for meals that are 500/600 calories, but by doing so you kind of cheat yourself out of the wealth of information that the authors supply in the book and why they arrive at 5:2 being the most successful plan of attack.

What this really boils down to, and why it works, is simple math: by doing the 5:2 diet you're cutting out almost 4,000 calories a week for men (based upon Recommended Daily/dietary Allowance of 2,500 calories). You will lose weight by doing so.

Another reason why it works it because you don't overeat on the normal eating days. I thought I was going to be ravenous the next day after a fast, but I wasn't. In fact, I just ate as I normally would. Another interesting phenomenon was that I thought I would be starving on those fast days but that wasn't the case at all, either. I just eat one-protein source (meat or fish) and lots of vegetables (broccoli or spinach or both) and maybe a salad. I might add in a protein shake if I'm still a little hungry, but that's it. Sometimes the protein shake would put me over the 600-calorie mark, but even still, I'm cutting out over 1,000 for that day, which is good.

The 5:2 diet is totally customizable and you don't have to stick with it to the letter like other diet plans, which is why I believe is another reason it works. I've skipped several fast days because of plans that would make controlling calorie intake impossible and just continued on the following week, so it's not a big deal to miss a fast day when life happens to curtail it.

I've seen newspaper reports that say how dangerous this diet is etc., and that people should stick with a normal diet blah-blah-blah, but if we could do that we wouldn't be overweight in the first place. However, this doesn't mean that you should throw out all commonsense when it comes to your dietary habits on normal days. You should still eat or strive to eat more vegetables and fruit on the days when you don't fast. This diet just makes it possible to cut calories without doing that every-single day, which can burn you out. And once you get down to your goal weight, you may cut back the fasting days to just once a week. Very do-able.

I haven't tried any of the recipes that are in the book, for some reason I can't follow a recipe for one small meal because I feel like if I'm going to go through the trouble of preparing it that meal better last for more than just one sitting, but they look pretty tasty.

Here's some tips that helped me get started:

* Plan Meals In Advance (for your fasting days) *
Believe me you don't want to be figuring out what to eat when you've gone from morning to night with just 90-calories in your stomach. And eating out, unless you know for a fact how many calories are in the meal, isn't a good idea since you can't control how many calories you're consuming.

* Know Your Body *
This was very important because I'm normally a very light breakfast eater, having no appetite the mornings, so I always eat just one Yoplait light (90-calories) for breakfast. When I started the 5:2 diet, I started getting or actually feeling light-headed before lunch, which is silly because I didn't do anything out of the ordinary on that day, so it was psychological. But you've got to know that before-hand otherwise you'd think it was really because of fasting.

* Add An Egg To Your Meal *
This tip was given to me by another reviewer who read the book before me (thanks, Lee) and eggs, either soft or hard boiled, really fill you up.

* Get A Calorie App *
I use both Calorie Counter (by Fat Secret) and My Fitness Pal, which are both available for free and work either for Android and iPhone OS (operating systems), and these apps help tremendously with keeping track of caloric intake. I think they work better than using a scale.

* Green and/or Black Tea *
Have these tea bags on hand because they're great to drink on fast days because the warmth is comforting and they fill you up.

Also, don't worry about your body going into starvation mode and holding onto every little calorie you eat because you aren't fasting for prolonged periods of time.

I also recommend choosing your fasting days on the days when you have very little physical activity, at least in the beginning, until you find out how your body reacts to the drop in calories. I don't exercise on those days, although I feel that I can now, but I don't want to over do it.

You'll also notice that your weight will go down dramatically after the fasting days, but tends to normalize after a few days of regular eating, so if you're going to record your weight and keep score, go by the number you get after eating normally. You can weigh yourself after the second fast day, but just know that your weight will go back up during that same week, giving the illusion that you're actually gaining weight (because that initial number is inaccurate and some of it is water weight that is lost), so it can be disheartening to see the scale going back up. A better barometer is how your clothes are fitting, but if you go by the other number you'll see that you'll be losing a pound a week or so.

IF you have a physically demanding job that requires a lot of physical exertion, but then you'd probably be in good physical shape already, I wouldn't advise doing the fast on those days.

This diet is NOT recommended for diabetics or people with eating disorders or young adults under the age of 18.

136 people found this helpful

Revolutionary Weight Loss Method!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

There are many ways to lose weight from counting point to micro-managing carbs. But almost all of them involve eating less calories on a daily basis. The result - you lose weight but let's face it the prospect of eating less every day gets old. And in many cases weight that is shed is quickly put back on.

Enter Dr. Michael Mosley with "The Fast Diet". Dr. Mosley a science researcher, investigated how fasting can result in enormous benefits such as increased longevity, lower blood pressure, improved cholesterol and much more. He presented his findings in the British television BBC special documentary "Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer".

Instead of a pure fast Dr. Mosley found that you could enjoy many benefits from eating a reduced calorie diet just 2 days a week and eating normally the other 5. For women about 500 calories and for men about 600 on the 2 lower calorie days. Based on the documentary thousands of British people tried eating this way and found it to be fast, effective and much easier than a traditional diet.

In the book, "The Fast Diet", Dr. Mosley presents the science behind how and why the diet works. His co-author Mini Spencer shares menu plans and tips to make the plan user friendly. The book also includes color photographs so you get a feel for what a low calorie day looks like. And there are inspirational accounts from people who are using the diet, losing weight and enjoying greater health and renewed vitality.

A typical 500 calorie day on the plan might include a small apple, small mango and small boiled egg (223 calories) for breakfast and a tuna, bean and garlic salad for dinner (267 calories). Or you could spread your calories between lunch and dinner or eat them at one main meal. The plan is very flexible. The days you are not on the plan you eat normally, including high fat foods, without counting calories. You might think that on the feed days people would go crazy but research has shown that people eat only a little more than what they would normally eat. Knowing that you can have pretty much what you like most days of the week makes sticking to the plan so much easier than traditional diets.

Based on the documentary (before the book was released in the U.S.) I decided to try the plan making up simple 500 calorie meals and I was amazed at how much easier it is than traditional dieting. Variations of the plan are easy to do also such as every other day, 4:3 etc. And if you miss a day you simply get back on track the next. On fast days, I like to go as far into the day as possible without eating so I have a cup of espresso in the morning, an egg on sandwich thin with berries around noon, small snack mid-afternoon and a protein with veggies for dinner. It has been surprisingly easy to do. I dropped 5 pounds fast!

The benefits of following 5:2 are huge from what we can see visually i.e. weight loss to what we can't i.e. our bodies inner workings. And best of all many find that it is so much easier to diet just a couple days a week than every day. You really do get used to it. Once you have achieved your desired body weight you can adjust the plan to one day a week if desired or eat a few more calories on the diet days.

Side note - I purchased the Kindle version of the book and the formatting is excellent. The menu plan is hyper-linked to the recipes and the color photos are clear.

Overall if you are struggling with traditional diets and want to improve your health, this book, "The Fast Diet" gets my highest recommendation!

1,449 people found this helpful

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David Byles

La dieta de fasting intermitente.

Reviewed in Mexico on June 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

Esta dieta es fácil de seguir por siempre, es muy bien pensado por el fasting intermitente, y con recetas sabrosas...

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LG

Healthy life, fasting right

Reviewed in Brazil on September 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

it seems challenging but I am curious.
there are excellent tips in the book and i am going to start fasting for 3 days starting today.

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JPH

Very Easy to Follow

Reviewed in Japan on April 17, 2013

Verified Purchase

The Fast Diet was a very interesting book to read.
The author explained the process of losing weight very well.
But too many pages.

2 people found this helpful

aida Eliamen

La dieta del agua

Reviewed in Mexico on December 1, 2016

Verified Purchase

Yo recomendaría este libro a toda la gente que tiene necesidades de bajar de peso y ser feliz, a penas empecé a tomar agua y me he sentido de maravilla adios flojera, voy bien espero quien lo necesite lo compre no se va arrepentir.

One person found this helpful

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Andy

Good Stuff

Reviewed in Japan on April 10, 2017

Verified Purchase

Was recommended this book and it is great for my diet.

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