Thoughts on starting the 5:2 Diet

Hi, I'm Sunny. I created this blog as a way to track my progress (and keep myself honest) as I embarked upon the 5:2 Diet (the diet in which you eat normally for 5 days of the week and then restrict your calories to under 500/day for the other 2 days).

I'm a middle-aged mom who has typically been about 5-20 lbs. overweight during my adult life. At the moment, I'm just a smidge under 5'6"and weigh 164 lbs. That's pretty heavy for me; I like to stay under 160 and am even happier if I'm closer to 150. But, you know, the holidays, etc...

I'm very active - I run 2-4 times/week (between 3-6 miles) and have completed a half marathon and usually run a few 10K races every year. I also do hot yoga 2-4 times/week. And then there's walking the dog.

I found out about the 5:2 diet kind of randomly; just happened to see the (famous, I now realize) article in the Daily Telegraph (UK): "The 5:2 Diet: Can it help you lose weight and live longer?"I found it intriguing. I was also inspired by Telegraph food writer Xanthe Clay's article, "The 5:2 diet lets me have my cake and eat it," in which she doesn't sugar-coat the experience ("It makes me unspeakably bad-tempered") but also positive about the results: she lost "half a stone"(7 lbs to Americans) in a month, even during the holidays (and even being a food writer!).

For whatever reason, the 5:2 diet has not gotten much press in the USA. But I was already aware of the topic of intermittent fasting (and its purported health benefits) because I have a friend who is a zoologist and told me about studies at an American university in which lab mice who fasted every other day were much healthier than those who didn't.

I'm not a lab mouse, but I could stand to lose some weight. I'm not a crash dieter and have never done any cuckoo diets (although I did try Atkins for a while in the 1990s but I couldn't stick with it) and in general my weight is pretty stable. I like the idea that in the 5:2 scenario, there are no "off limit" foods. I also think there's a lot of good data out there about the health benefits of fasting - even if one doesn't do it to lose weight, necessarily.

So I figured I'd give it a whirl. Here goes!