What Is The 5:2 Diet And How To Do It

You may have heard someone mention the 5:2 diet, and you became curious about what it means. Well this post will answer all your questions about 5:2.

What Is The 5:2 Diet?

The 5:2 diet is where you fast for 2 non-consecutive days of the week and eat normally for the other 5 days. This may sound unhealthy to those who have never heard of intermittent fasting, but the benefits are amazing.

Just to name a few benefits of intermittent fasting:

• Increased BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor)
• Decreased inflammation
• Fat loss (while sparing muscle)
• Lower risk of illness

The benefits of intermittent fasting have been proven in many studies. I will cover those in more depth in another post, but for now we are talking specifically about the 5:2 diet.

How To Do The 5:2 Diet

For 5 days of the week you will eat your normal diet, whatever that may be. There is no counting or restrictions on those days.

For two days of the week, you will be fasting. You will consume 500 calories of low carb food on those days. Some people modify this by not consuming anything on those days, because sometimes it can be easier to eat nothing at all than to eat just a little bit.

Drink only water and no calorie beverages on your fasting days.

You would choose fasting days that are not beside each other on a calendar. So you would not choose to fast Monday and Tuesday. Instead you would need to choose something like Monday and Thursday. The idea is to break up the fast by at least one eating day.

Why Choose The 5:2 Diet

If you want to achieve weight loss, the 5:2 diet is a pretty good choice. This is because it's much easier than following a strict diet or calorie counting. Followers of the 5:2 diet lose weight without counting calories or restricting food on non fasting days. This makes it super easy to follow because you aren't torturing yourself every single day. You just have to make it through your 2 fasting days per week in order to see weight loss.

From what I've read and experienced, average weight loss on the 5:2 diet is 1 lb per week. Some people may not like that and they may think it's too slow. The weight loss is pretty good considering you are only dieting for 2 days of the week. In one year you could lose 52 lbs just by dieting for two days a week. That's not bad. You don't have to deprive yourself for 5 days of the week, making this diet very easy to stick to.

What If Weight Stalls?

If your weight stalls, it usually means that you are eating a bit more than average on your "eating" days. Most people are able to lose the average amount of weight on the 5:2 diet, but some people may struggle and their weight may stall.

If this happens, people will usually add an extra fasting day, making the diet 4:3. After doing this, weight loss typically picks back up again.

How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?

First of all, congratulations in advance for reaching your goal weight. For most people on the 5:2 diet, they will maintain weight loss by switching to a 6:1 schedule. This means fasting one day per week in order to maintain the weight you have lost. For the other 6 days, you will eat normally.

Overall, this is a great diet. Most people fail diets that they start, but studies have proven that the 5:2 diet is much easier to stick with. This is because you are only dieting twice a week, as opposed to having to restrict daily. You are more likely to succeed and keep the weight off for good on the 5:2 diet.