5: 2 diet 4 months on

5:2 diet 4 months on

Well I have continued with the 5:2 diet since last November when my GP suggested I try it as my cholesterol level was too high and without taking Statins or doing the diet a heart attack was possible. Well to a hypochondriac like me that was a wake up call. And I really don’t like the idea of being on long term medication. 5 years on penicillin as a teenager was enough for me and I really didn’t want to see myself as one of those as on medication for the rest of my life. Well at least not yet! So I have become a 5:2 bore instead. Except many people I have spoken to are also on the diet - well the Mosley book has sold 500,000 copies last year alone.

So for 2 days a week I eat 600 calories or less, it is rather confusingly called a ‘fast day’ and this triggers my body into some very useful actions that lower my cholesterol and cause me to lose weight even though I eat more or less as normal on the other 5 days. My cholesterol levels have come down quite a bit already which pleased my GP no end! and I have also lost 8 kilos – 10% of my weight.

On the 2 days I am often hungry and a bit grumpy or is it the other way round? It helps if I am working at home or have plenty of meetings scheduled. I feel, and probably are, thinner skinned, a bit more vulnerable but also in more recent weeks I have started to like and enjoy my body more now that there is less of it. I have had to buy some new clothes as the old ones were getting a bit baggy.

Each day that I do the diet I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach, it is one day or maybe one week at a time and I just hope that one day my GP will say ‘Enough’ or at least ‘Just do it one day a week’. Two months to go till my next blood test.

My family have been great, helping my count calories and figure out some tasty low calorie foods. It also helps that I have flexibility in my work timetable and that I can vary the days on which I fast and fit things around holidays etc.

It is also supposed to bring a cognitive improvement but I can see little trace of that apart from a slightly manic phase for 3 days a couple of weeks ago, but I blame the moon for that.