Two- Day Diets: How Mini Fasts Can Help Maximize Weight Loss. This is not a detox diet. Nor is it an extreme version of calorie restriction. Nope, the strategy of so- called 5- 2 diets is to endure two days a week of mini- fasting. This doesn't mean starving yourself. Rather, it entails reducing your calorie intake during two days of the week down to somewhere in the range of 5. The idea of intermittent mini- fasting seems to be gaining traction. One version of the diet is being popularized by Michael Mosley, a British physician and journalist who's written a best- selling book called The Fast Diet and produced a documentary. And there are other popular tomes on the topic. Take for instance, The 5: 2 Diet Book, which claims you can boost your brain power and transform your health by feasting for five days and fasting for two. With so much hype, I was skeptical so I dug a little deeper into the science behind these diets. My first stop was Baltimore, where I visiting the National Institute on Aging. It's here that researcher Mark Mattson has conducted a lot of pioneering animal studies. He's interested in how limiting calories may fend off aging- related diseases. He's found that intermittent fasting in rodents seems to improve their blood sugar levels, boost performance on cognitive tasks and help keep them lean. His intent is not to lose weight, since he's already very lean. Rather, he says he fasts for about 1. He says he's more productive. So, what's the evidence that this diet works in people who are trying to lose weight? The most convincing evidence comes from a study that was done in Manchester, England, a few years back. About 1. 00 women, all of them overweight, were asked to follow a diet in which, for five days a week, they followed a Mediterranean diet pattern of eating. The other two days, they ate a low- calorie diet of lean protein and cut out almost all carbohydrates. At the end of the study, the women on this 5- 2 diet lost significantly more weight compared to women who'd tried to restrict calories all week long. And in addition, their insulin resistance improved. Years later, she's kept the weight off and is still following this pattern of eating. And she's published more about the results of her research in a new book, The 2- Day Diet. Champions of the 5:2 diet claim that other than helping people lose weight, 5:2 diet can bring other significant health benefits, including: increased lifespan.
Discussion and Talk about 5:2 diet anyone tried this. I am on the 5.2 diet and it seems to work well for me. I just saw the article on NPR about this diet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2017
Categories |