When I am working with clients I have no attachment to any particular methodology that we should use. I am focused on results have used many different methods to get people to their goals. One that is good for certain clients is the 5 & 2 Diet and employing low calorie days twice a week. Like most diets people have interpreted it differently but the general schema is women eat 500 calories in a day while men 600 calories twice a week. You can then eat freely enough on other days.
Last week I decided to follow the protocol. The only problem I have is that my movement is crazy. I am not one to make excuses though so I set out to do what it says. Day 1 I ate only my 600 calories while moving 24km via walking/running. My second lower calorie day I pushed it further again…. I moved 30km (40 000 steps) on just 600 calories… I ate these calories at 10pm before bed and after all my movement…. I was tempted to not eat at all to test the laterative day eating diet but common sense won through…
I am surprised that my hunger was very gentle and not too difficult. My energy remained high throughout the day though I was flatter if tried to push the movement/exercise etc. Body temperature took a bit of a hit as I felt the cold more which doesn’t usually happen. I am happy I did it and it really shows how much your body can do when asked to….. some insights –
– The ease of doing these challenges I feel is largely because I have broken the connection of moving my hand towards my mouth…. most people when they diet replace food with water or tea etc… Doing Ramadan taught me not to do this and makes it easier.
– Also from doing Ramadan I learnt that by not drinking water it made me much less hungry. I have also found this to be true with various clients (but not across the board). I did the same on these days and as said I felt little hunger.
– Whenever I have dieted hard my mental focus is mostly on the next meal with a secondary focus on the next off day. I have found this invaluable, if my mind drifts to the longer term focus my motivation just collapses.
– Another mental aspect is that I enjoy doing these things for what I will gain in the experience. My life has always been focused on chasing new experiences and food related ones are as good as any. Put another way I am not complaining and focusing on the lack of food or not being able to eat but I am excited at going through the experience and losing body fat. If I can lose fat in 5 different methodologies mentally I would rather do that over a 5 week dieting phase than the same one for 5 weeks.
– Whenever I do a nutrition challenge I become more confident around food and more in control of food, behaviour and my body.
– I lost body fat during the first four days nicely enough. I had planned to make this week an average 2000 calorie per day intake so I could compare the 5&2 diet to the many other experiments I have done on this blog such as the Mc Donald’s Experiment, Low Carb Diet, Junk Food Diet, Vegan Diet, Sugar Only Diet and more. I will have to come back to do this experiment again as due to an audition I needed to eat so I had energy and looked good.
For you reading this assuming you are in good health then feel free to try this fasting protocol. Leave a comment with how you find it below.
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