Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $1.20 shipping
95% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
100% positive over last 12 months
& FREE Shipping
93% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the Authors
OK
The FastDiet - Revised & Updated: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting Paperback – January 6, 2015
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $7.00 | $3.37 |
Enhance your purchase
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 have shown that intermittent fasting will help the pounds fly off and reduce your risk of diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer, offering a dietary program you can incorporate into your busy daily life. This revised and updated edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller features:
-More quick and easy fast day recipes
-A new section on the psychology of dieting
-The latest research on the science behind the program
-Dozens of new testimonials
Far from being just another fad, The FastDiet is a radical new way of thinking—your indispensable guide to simple and effective weight loss, without fuss or the need to endlessly deprive yourself.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 6, 2015
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.6 x 8.38 inches
- ISBN-10150110201X
- ISBN-13978-1501102011
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

- +
- +
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Mimi Spencer is a feature writer, columnist, and the author of 101 Things to Do Before You Diet.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : Atria Books; Revised, Updated edition (January 6, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 150110201X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1501102011
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.38 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #48,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #321 in Weight Loss Diets (Books)
- #420 in Exercise & Fitness (Books)
- #472 in Other Diet Books
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
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.
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!
Top reviews from other countries
It helps that we eat lots more veg on fast days to really fill up, which also creates a more mindful attitude to food on non fast days too. Rather than a diet this is a way of life, and if one day you're not feeling well, or fall off the wagon you just try again the next day, it fits around your life.
I'd recommend his other book too the healthy gut diet book in conjunction with this, the gut book's recipes were not written for vegans specifically but there are lots of lovely vegan friendly recipes to enjoy - we love the nutty, turmeric and lemon cauliflower rice and the cashew breakfast pots (we have for lunch), the recipes in the gut book are very fasting day friendly as they don't raise the insulin levels too much, therefore regulate appetite. Fasting is also great if you suffer from diabetes, amongst many other ailments. Give it a try. We've lost weight, have more energy and feel great. I actually look forward to my fast days now, I enjoy food not being the focus until tea time, and the increased energy levels. Happy fasting 😀











