What is the latest fat loss craze known as 5:2 diet? The 5:2 diet is where on five days of the week you eat whatever you like sticking to the recommended calorie intake for either male (2500 cals) or female (2000 cals). Ideally on the other two days of the week you limit yourself to 500 calories a day if you are a female or 600 calories a day if you are a male, theory behind this is that it sends your body into a fast. Or some people are eating whatever they want for 5 days then nothing (or just a small dinner) for the other 2 days.
The 5:2 diet is really just a fancy name for intermittent fasting. It works especially with people who are very unhealthy or when they have more than 10-20 kgs overweight. Its basically eating with your instincts as you shouldn’t feel hungry the next day after eating too much the previous day. Right?
Fasting is seen as an effective way to lose fat because by cutting down on your calorie intake intermittently, rather than all at once, your body goes into repair mode instead of starvation mode, PLUS it is busy digesting food you’ve just eaten right? This repair mode causes the body to restore damaged cells, which causes the body to use more energy; whereas starvation mode causes your body to grow and store fat cells.
With that being said lets go through the pros and cons of this diet and you can decide if it’s right for you (I have to say here you won’t know until you try it, but it shouldn’t give you the right to binge eat for 5 days then eat nothing for 2 days. The 5:2 diet will help you:
- Burn fat: Because there is evidence that intermittent fasting helps promote more fat loss than muscle loss.
- Boost your mood: Fasting may help improve the mood in adults. People who have participated in intermittent fasting have found they sleep better, have higher energy and concentration and a greater sense of overall well-being. (It’s called giving your digestion a break)
- Repair your body: We all naturally produce a growth hormone called IGF-1
and while it’s great at keeping the body on the go, in later life it can also speed up the aging and the onset of age-related diseases. When we fast, IGF-1 production is inhibited, and our bodies go into ‘repair’ mode, giving cells time to rebuild themselves more effectively.
Now time for the cons; looking at this from a psychological perspective, when individuals have restrictive diet it can cause them to think about food more and more. This can lead to binging (especially for females) which can be caused from either being hungry or hormonal fluctuations like blood sugar levels going up and down. Now you have to ask yourself if the 5:2 diet is for you, on one hand you might just be sitting at a computer all day and have a low energy demands but on the other hand you could be a busy mum with three kids that goes to the gym everyday. High chances that if you are cutting your calories when you have a high energy demand you will be left feeling tired and not to mention you will be battling extreme hunger and cravings (just take it easy on the low calorie days if that’s the case). And get to know yourself if you find calorie restricting leads you to binge eat at the end of the night and you feel bad as you were unable to control yourself.
What we’d suggest is that you fast over the night for 3 days per week especially for females we’ve noticed this seems easy for us girls, for example eat your last meal at 5/6pm and then fast until 8am the next day, leaving around 13 hours without food, giving you all the benefits of fasting.
With any diet, no matter how positive the results are reported to be, it’s important to make sure it is sustainable long term and, most importantly, do no damage to your body and you should be able to maintain your energy levels after a few weeks.
More diet reviews coming soon. What else would you like to hear about? Please comment below.
Plus to see more about my take on ‘why I believe the calorie theory is incomplete’ click here.
For help on choosing the right diet for you click here to contact us.
Article written by Teena Kyriazis and Kate Martin