Davies Express: 5:2 Diet or The Fast Diet

Wednesday 9 January 2013

5:2 Diet or The Fast Diet

5:2 Diet

Eat, Fast and Live Longer.

Michael Mosley, set himself the challenge to live longer, stay younger and lose weight. Three things that I am sure we would all like to achieve. During a one hour Horizon documentary Mosley spoke to many people including scientists and found out that a low calorie diet is the secret to these three elusive goals.

There are different ways to go about this, but basically you are either looking at having a continual low calorie diet or fasting. I think I would rather shoot myself in the foot than go on a lifelong low calorie diet, so I was interested to find out how the fasting went and the results it produced.

The results were astonishing. Mosley found out that a third of his body was fat and that he stood a high chance of getting heart disease and cancer, but after he fasted for 3½ days, his chances were reduced dramatically. Here is an explanation of how it works:

Our bodies have a growth hormone called IGF -1. As a child this is what helps our bodies grow, but as adults it ages us.
High levels of IGF-1 can lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Lowering your levels of IGF-1 can help prevent against these diseases and can be done through your diet.
When lowering your IGF-1 levels, growth stops and your body starts to repair cells. It also uses up your glucose and starts to burn fat, so you also lose weight.

Now it all begins to make sense, doesn't it? But a 3½ day fast is more than most of us could contemplate. There are another two options: