How this Fast Diet Lifestyle works: Eat these meals tomorrow. On Thursday, eat the meals that will be posted on Wednesday.  Eat sensibly the other days of the week.  That’s it.  Simple way to lose weight and be healthier.                                                                             Welcome to BeBlogger who is now Following.

This blog is about Fasting, aka: 5:2 Diet; IF.  “I’m not giving up eating!” you sneer. “Fasting is for ascetics who don’t enjoy life.”  If you really think that, then I want you to understand that this Lifestyle does involve eating [some really good food] and that there are many benefits beyond weight loss.  While on this Lifestyle [WOL], my husband and I have enjoyed lots of delicious food while losing a combined total of 50 pounds.  This Lifestyle is sustainable: you can do it week after week, year after year and not feel deprived.                                                                                                                                         What do you eat on the Slow [non-Fast] Days? What you want — WITHIN REASON.  Pigging out is not approved, but we go to restaurants and eat all sorts of foods. The key is learning the number of calories that you can ingest [TDEE] to get to the weight you want to achieve. This diet is not about counting calories, but you need to get a realistic sense of how much you are eating daily.  Weight loss comes with less food taken in over time and a resulting decrease in appetite.

WHY FAST?                                                                                                                                             “We all know how you are supposed to lose weight: eat low-fat foods, exercise more… and never, ever skip meals. This has been standard dietary advice for decades and though it may work for some people, levels of obesity continue to soar. So is there an alternative? We think there is. Intermittent fasting. Based on the work of leading scientists from around the world, this is an exciting new alternative to standard dieting.

“Intermittent Fasting does not mean stopping eating entirely. It means reducing the amount you eat, but only for quite short periods of time.

“In The Fast Diet book I outline my experiences of trying different forms of intermittent fasting, before settling on what I called a 5:2 regime. With 5:2 intermittent fasting you eat normally five days a week and diet two days a week, cutting your calorie intake for those two days to a ¼ of their normal level. This means that on, say, a Monday and a Thursday you will eat 500 calories if you are a woman, 600 if you are a man.

“If you stick to this plan then you should lose around 1lb (0.46kg) a week if you are a woman, slightly more for a man. Success also depends on not over-eating on your normal days.

“You should not only lose weight but also enjoy a wide range of health benefits. Studies of intermittent fasting show that not only do people see improvements in blood pressure and their cholesterol levels, but also in their insulin sensitivity.

“As one of the medical experts I interviewed put it: ‘There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.’

“Welcome to The Fast Diet and to the community on this site. We will keep you up to date with the latest in this exciting new field. You can read how others are managing this way of life and pick up lots of helpful tips. We hope it works for you.”                                              — Michael Mosley, originator of the Fast Diet

This blog is about recipes to eat on Fast Days.  Some of them appear in our regular diet on Slow Days because they are so yummy. Throughout 2018, I will be posting recipes which I hope will make following the Fasting Lifestyle as easy as A-B-C. There will also be tips for how to stock your freezer and your pantry to make it convenient to prepare the healthy, home-made food that we eat every week.

If you want to improve your health and lose weight, I recommend that you follow the Fasting Lifestyle. The New Year is a time for a fresh start.  Try Fasting.