I’m currently travelling at a little over 500mph at an altitude of 38,000 feet. I have an unlimited supply of Pouilly Fume, Avici blasting in my Bose headphones (thank-you lovely boyfriend) and another 5 hours flying time until New York. So it seemed like a good time to have that rant about fad diets, and nutritional advice and why I think 5:2 is a good idea.
One of the lovely pandas on Facebook posted a link to a
recent article with comments about why 5:2 is just another fad which will fade
away. The comment that particularly struck me, from a Professor of
Nutritionologyish, was that the reason 5:2 was working for some people was because
they were cutting calories, so it was no different to any number of other diets
and therefore doomed to fade away in the long term. Er….? I don’t really understand
the point she was trying to make. It works therefore it will fail?
If you want to lose weight, you need to take in less
calories than you put out. All different diets do is give you strategies for achieving that goal.
There is research that shows that the types of food
you eat are absorbed in different ways by the body, so the same amount of
calories from two different foods may lead to different weight change outcomes.
There is research that shows that eating at different times of day can also
have an effect. However, from personal experience and mountains of anecdotal
evidence, I’m convinced that the factor that has absolutely the biggest impact
on anyone’s weight, is consistent eating habits over a long period of time.
All diets will work to a certain extent. However you choose
to limit your calorie intake, if you are taking in less than you are putting
out you will lose weight. You can do that on an extreme calorie restriction
diet of 500cal a day every day, you can exist on shakes or cabbage soup, you
can count points or sins, you can do Atkins or Paleo or, in fact, 5:2, and lose
weight. You can also do all of the above and completely fail to lose weight, or
have other unhealthy side effects.
What really counts is what you do week after week, month
after month, year after year. The people you see in the media who have lost
huge amounts, who have gone from supersize to ultrafit, have been implementing
their chosen strategies, consistently, over long periods of time.
People who
are “naturally” slim have excellent food and exercise habits. The reason I'm in this state in the first place is due to not wanting to take responsibility for the outcomes of what I eat.
Which brings me to why I think 5:2 is a good idea – it is
sustainable. Over and over I see people writing that they feel they can keep
doing intermittent fasting indefinitely. I personally now find fast days a
breeze most of the time. In fact, I look forward to them. Going more than 4
days without a fast feels very uncomfortable. Yes, the reason I am losing
weight is that I am cutting my overall calorie intake. That’s the whole point!
The part where it becomes brilliant is that I’m cutting
calories in a way that I can keep doing week after week after week, on holiday,
at home, at work, in almost every circumstance, and if I need to take a break
(my business trip this week being an example), I can start again as soon as
possible with relatively little impact. Along the way I am re-setting a
lifetime of poor eating habits, completely changing my attitude to food and
finally finding some peace in my relationship with food.
And the part where it becomes even more brilliant, is that I
get all kinds of other fantastic health benefits along the way. I know that
some health and nutritional professionals don’t think much of the fasting
“fad”, but a growing number of GPs and researchers are supporting it, as they
see the evidence building in their own constituencies.
Yes it is possible to do 5:2 in a very unhealthy way, eating
processed food on fast days and bingeing inbetween. But it’s possible to do
every other diet badly too, and much harder to keep at them week in week out.
5:2 doesn’t require you to cut out any food groups or monitor your intake
obsessively. It does require you to think, carefully, about what you are eating
and how you are dealing with hunger. It does fit in around your other dietary
requirements – vegan? Kosher? Gluten free? Lactose intolerant? No problem.
I think that’s the end of my rant. Only time will tell if
intermittent fasting becomes a generally accepted way of eating in the long
term or if it fades away as the naysayers predict. I have nothing against
people using and promoting other methods, if it works for them – different
things work for different people and individuals need to find what works for
them. I know that for me, this is the most effective method I’ve ever come
across, so I’m sticking to it like glue.
No comments:
Post a Comment