A Review of the 5-2 Diet / Intermittent Fasting
- Degree of Difficulty / 0= Extremely Hard, 100- Extremely Easy/ 50%
- Level of Activity /0=Not included, 100= Activity is high/ 50%
- Water Included in Diet /0=Not included, 100= Built into plan/ 100%
- Maintenance Plan /0=No plan after initial weight loss, 100= Lifetime plan/ 100%
Description
The hypothesis of this diet is that if you can control yourself on just two days a week you will be able to lose weight. The recommendation is to eat normal 5 days each week and to fast for 2 days each week. On fasting days the dieter eats 500 calories (women) or 600 calories (men). Use this calculator to determine how may calories you can eat on non-fasting days. It is important to note that fasting days are actually 36 hours. If you finish dinner at 7:00 on Sunday, fast on Monday then your fasting would end at 7:00 am on Tuesday. Every calorie from 7:00 pm Sunday until 7:00 am Tuesday counts against your 600/500 fasting day limit.
Ease for Dieter*
Medium – Hard
- It can be daunting to be so calorie restricted two days a week
- You can eat fairly opening 5 days
- It can be hard to not go over board on the non-fast days
(*My impression is based on my research and how hard I think it would be to maintain for 1, 6, 8, 10, 20 weeks. Your experience may vary.)
Food Emphasis
- Extreme calorie control on fasting day
- Different calorie control on non-fasting days (based on BMI, BMR and TDEE)
Maintenance Plan
- Lifetime. You can change the number of fasting days to one for maintenance
Suggested Activity Level
- Activity level is used to calculate how many calories to eat on non-fasting days
- Suggests water
Source
Suggested Further Reading from Amazon