In the book The Fast Diet, Mr. Mosley speaks of dividing
your week into feasting days and fasting days and apparently it works! Well, not everyone is convinced and despite
the growing number of total weight lost thanks to the “5:2” diet, the skeptics
are not too thrilled. Intermittent diet
is nothing new and people in the health and weight loss community have been
doing research to understand it and why it works.
The concept or basic science behind the theory is to teach
the body to use its stored fats during the fasting days. The body derives its energy from glucose and
they are found in our blood, glycogen and fat stores (fat cells). When the body is deprived of the glucose from
a meal, it turns to the glucose which is already in the blood. Once that is depleted, the body turns to the
glucose stored in glycogen and finally on to fat cells. Well,
it does make sense and may make even more sense if you read the book. Endorsers of the 5:2 diet goes on to say that
this lifestyle increases lifespan, improves brain function and may help prevent
dementia and Alzheimers. This is because
the intermittent fasting changes how the body functions and in a way that
prevents glucose related diseases.
Fasting also shrinks the size of the stomach which is why subjects do
not “pig-out” during the “feast” days.
On the other side of the fence are
doctors and people who say that there is not enough scientific evidence to
support the diet’s health claims. They
are concerned about the psychological implications of such a diet. They consider the Fast Diet an extreme diet
and may be abused by certain people.
Some even say it is akin to bulimia.
However, proponents of the book does not endorse going on a fasting diet
for more than 24 hours because the body cannot sustain the loss of
nutrients. And on fasting days, you do
not completely go without food, just extremely lowered to about 500 calories
for women and 600 calories for men. And for feast days, there is no limit to
what you want to eat and how much.
Intermittent dieting has proved
itself to get positive results but since the diet itself is fairly new, there
is no way of telling how it affects the human body in the long term. There have been studies conducted since 1945,
but they are done on mice.
The diet has worked for a lot of
people and whether it is the diet plan that may work for you, it is still
considered a health decision you need to make with your doctor.
References:
The
Fast Diet : By Michael Mosley and
Mimi Spencer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511220/
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