B00AFYX78I EBOK (10 page)

In
the next part of the book, I’ll explain how to adapt this diet so it works best
for you. But first, will my quest for winter sun be my diet undoing?

Hiccups
in the sun

Mood: evangelical, positive, flexible

Everyone
I talk to seems to know someone who is doing this diet - and it’s as appealing
to men as to women. I’ve been chatting to men about why, especially as so many
men I know are reluctant to admit to dieting. Is it the all or nothing nature
of the Fast Days? The simplicity of it? Or maybe it’s just that it
really
works?

I’ve also set up a group on Facebook called The 5:2 Diet so we
can share our experiences. But the Facebook group is only the start - I feel so
evangelical about this plan that I’ve decided to write all I know about it as
an e-book - the book I wish there’d been when I first heard about it.

OK, I’m not a scientist, but I did work as a journalist on news,
documentaries and food programmes at the BBC for fifteen years, so I’m pretty
used to separating fact from fiction. Plus, I’ve learned a huge amount about
how the diet works in real life, by talking to others who are doing it.

The hiccups

Of
course, the moment I decide to write about the diet, my weight loss stalls. I
lose nothing in the first week and feel slightly disheartened. There’s a second
hiccup on the horizon. I’m off on holiday to Tenerife for a week this month and
I know I won’t be fasting there, so I decide on a pre-emptive strike, switching
to ADF - fasting every other day - for the week beforehand.

Again, I’m surprised how easy it is. I simply fall into a
routine of eating well but unrestrictedly one day, and then being extra careful
the next. I hardly weigh any foods out anymore but am grateful for supermarket
fresh soups… I know how cheap it is to make your own, but it also involves
being tempted to add little extras to the recipe, whereas these pots involve no
more preparation than pressing a button on the microwave.

Cheap as Chips

Despite
buying ready-made soups, I’m saving money through this diet – in fact, I must
remember to stop buying as many groceries as my freezer won’t fit all the
things I buy but then don’t eat.

I’m
cutting back on my snacking on Fast Days, but also on Feast Days because I am
somehow more able to ask myself the question: do I really want this? If I do,
then it’s absolutely fine. But even being able to ask that question seems to
curb my appetite.

And on the Fast Days I am eating very little, so my shopping
bill is going down - unlike when I was low-carbing, and had to buy lots of
expensive protein - or when I was doing normal calorie counting and spent a
fair amount on special ‘low-cal’ options which always cost more.

There are occasional comedy moments, too - like the day I took a
chip off my boyfriend’s plate, then insisted on weighing a similar-sized one
and entering it into MyFitnessPal. One chip = 8 calories = too much!

A week off fasting

Back
from my hols: and I didn’t count a single calorie while I was there. Buffet
breakfasts, buffet dinners and lots of lovely Spanish wine.

Buffets
are notoriously bad news for dieters. I’ve read about research that shows the
variety makes us go a bit crazy, grabbing a little bit of this and that and the
other which adds up to far more calories than we’d eat at a normal meal. But on
the holiday, I am more conscious of stopping when I am hungry, not least
because my bikini body is still not as svelte as I’d like it to be.

With that in mind I do something unprecedented - go the hotel
gym! Four times. It’s not easy because the weather is hot and the gym’s not
air-conditioned and the equipment is pretty basic, but I do it. Everyone else
in the gym is very buff and I feel a bit like the lardy girl in the corner. But
maybe before long I’ll be buff too?

OK,
it’s only a loss of two pounds this month but I have had a great holiday, plus
I think I am putting on muscle from the gym.

As for my goal - well, till now I haven’t dared have one, but I
think I’d like to be a nice round (well, not
that
round) 10 stone (63.5
kg) - or maybe 9 stone 13 (63 kg) to be in single figures.

Back to Fasting and Feasting

I
loved my holiday but I am also looking forward to restarting my new routine. I
like the thought it’s doing me good as well as making me look better in my
clothes. So after I get back, I switch from 5:2 to 4:3 and deliberately don’t
weigh myself in the week or so after I return from holidays because I don’t
want to feel down-hearted. But my jeans are still looser than they were.

My routine is pretty fixed now, but I’m experimenting with
exercise. I did join the gym just before I started this lifestyle but it’s
become more important to me while I’m doing this - at first, I avoided
exercising on a Fast Day but recently I’ve tried it and it’s fine for me. I
don’t feel dizzy or wobbly at all. And the exercise just feels like part of
what I want to do to look after myself more, and maximise the benefits of the
diet. I also don’t eat any more to compensate for the calories I’ve burned at
the gym. Once I do an extra-long workout – using around 500 calories – and eat
470, which puts me into a strange ‘minus’ calories place on MyFitnessPal. And
makes me feel
very
smug.

The Eggs Florentine Episode

The
one thing with this way of eating is that it can be slightly less sociable.
It’s easy to schedule the diet for a couple of days a week when you have
nothing planned, but 4:3 or ADF means you have to fast on Friday, Saturday or
Sunday. Which are the days we often do something spontaneous.

That’s what happened on Sunday. We went to my favourite cafe -
Temptation in Brighton, you
have
to go if you’re in town - and I’d
thought, that’s fine, I’ll have the soup.

Then came the bombshell - they don’t serve soup at weekends!

There was nothing on the menu that seemed likely to be under 500
calories. Their breakfasts are legendary, their cakes towering, and I was
seriously grumpy as I ordered black coffee and braced myself to watch everyone
else scoffing breakfast.

‘This is very anti-social,’ said the boyfriend. ‘And perhaps a
little obsessive. After all, it’s only one day. One meal.’

I tried to think about the counterargument - the fact that the
Fast Days do involve commitment. And yet he did have a point…

So I went and ordered the eggs Florentine: two poached eggs,
spinach, sourdough toast and - this is the only unhealthy bit - lashings of
sunshine yellow hollandaise sauce, vowing that I’d scrape off the sauce, even
though it’s my favourite bit.

And then I scoffed the lot.

At home, I looked up Hollandaise on MyFitnessPal. When I’ve
tried to make it myself, it involved vast quantities of butter. So yes, it was
high fat and very calorific. But so what if I’d gone over on one of my Fast
Days? It’s one day out of an entire lifetime. What this diet is doing is making
me aware and informed about what I put in my body.

The Eggs Florentine Episode is a warning not to take it
too
seriously.
To live a little.

And, guess what? I didn’t actually feel hungry for the rest of
the day…

Every Day I Write the Book…

I’ve
spent the month working on the 5:2 book. Researching the science, and talking
to dozens of other people doing this, has made me even more enthusiastic about
what we’re all doing.

My
only frustration is that I didn’t discover this years ago.

Well,
I knew something good was happening as I’ve already swapped from my old baggy
size 14 jeans back into the 12s, and even they feel loose. But it’s lovely to
see that reflected on the scales.

Plus,
my energy levels are so high that I’m actually feeling festive, something very
rare for me as the nights close in!

Christmas?
Bring it on…

Step One: How much do you
want to lose, and how much can you afford to eat?

Prepare for some sums. I’ll keep them to a minimum, but the
calculations will help you monitor your progress.

Even if you’re attracted to 5:2 for health reasons, rather
than weight loss, it’s worth doing some measuring now, to help you see what
changes it’s making.

There’s so much more to this than numbers, of course - it’s
about how you feel, and look, and how well the body’s working - but if you want
to fine-tune the diet, don’t skip this part. The good news is that it should
take you no time at all to work the figures out, and once you have, you’re all
set.

Weigh yourself

Yes, I know. If you’re worried about your weight, this part
is grim. But once you begin to lose weight, you’ll be glad you’ve been honest
with yourself at this stage – because your progress will be all the more
impressive.

Calculate your BMI or height/waist ratio

As you read in
Chapter Two
, BMI isn’t always the best
indicator of your weight level, especially if you’re very athletic, but it does
give a basic indicator. You calculate it using this simple formula –

Or - even more simply - by using the calculators on
MyFitnessPal.com or other weight loss sites (just search for BMI calculator).

The alternative measurement I outlined in
Chapter Two
is
your height/waist ratio, one that is increasingly seen by doctors as most useful
in predicting the chance of cardiovascular problems (for an explanation, refer
back to that chapter).

Measure your waist. You want the measurement to be less than
half of your height. You can monitor your progress by dividing the waist size
by the height – if your waist gets smaller, than so will the ratio.

As an example, here’s how mine has changed before and after
5:2.

August 2012: Waist in inches (32 inches)
÷Height in inches (64) = 0.5

January 2013: Waist (29.5) ÷ Height (64)
= 0.46

You’ll get the same ratio if you measure in cm. My only
comment on using this as your only progress check is that it’s likely to be
slower to change than weight loss so may not be as immediately motivating –
plus, as I’ve always had quite a pear shape, my starting measurement was (just)
acceptable. Yet I was clearly overweight and although that measure indicates a
low-ish risk of cardiovascular problems, I know my weight was putting me at
higher risk of diabetes, given how common it is in my family.