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PDF Ebook The FastDiet - Revised & Updated: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, by Michael Mo
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The #1 New York Times bestseller
Is it possible to eat normally, five days a week, and become slimmer and healthier as a result?
Simple answer: yes. You just limit your calorie intake for two nonconsecutive days each week—500 calories for women, 600 for men. You’ll lose weight quickly and effortlessly with the FastDiet.
Scientific trials of intermittent fasters have shown that it will not only help the pounds fly off, but also reduce your risk of a range of diseases from diabetes to cardiovascular disease and even cancer. “The scientific evidence is strong that intermittent fasting can improve health,” says Dr. Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences, National Institute on Aging, and Professor of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University.
This book brings together the results of new, groundbreaking research to create a dietary program that can be incorporated into your busy daily life, featuring:
• Forty 500- and 600-calorie meals that are quick and easy to make
• 8 pages of photos that show you what a typical “fasting meal” looks like
• The cutting-edge science behind the program
• A calorie counter that makes dieting easy
• And much more.
Far from being just another fad, the FastDiet is a radical new way of thinking about food, a lifestyle choice that could transform your health. This is your indispensable guide to simple and effective weight loss, without fuss or the need to endlessly deprive yourself.
- Sales Rank: #21456 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-02-26
- Released on: 2013-02-26
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"Fans of the FastDiet report becoming radically healthier by fasting two days a week."
"The biggest diet revolution since Atkins."
"The only diet you'll ever need."
About the Author
Michael Mosley
Dr. Michael Mosley is the author of The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet and the coauthor, with Mimi Spencer, of the #1 New York Times bestseller The FastDiet, which has been published in over thirty-two languages around the world. He is also coauthor, with Peta Bee, of FastExercise and wrote the foreword for The FastDiet Cookbook by Mimi Spencer and Dr. Sarah Schenker. Dr. Mosley trained to be a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London before joining the BBC, where he has been a science journalist, executive producer, and, more recently, a well-known television personality. He has won numerous television awards, including an RTS (Royal Television Award), and was named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association.
Mimi Spencer
Mimi Spencer is a feature writer, columnist, and the author of 101 Things to Do Before You Diet.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Fast Diet Introduction
OVER THE LAST FEW DECADES, FOOD FADS HAVE come and gone, but the standard medical advice on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle has stayed much the same: eat low-fat foods, exercise more . . . and never, ever skip meals. Over that same period, levels of obesity worldwide have soared.
So is there a different evidence-based approach? One that relies on science, not opinion? Well, we think there is: intermittent fasting.
There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.
When we first read about the alleged benefits of intermittent fasting, we, like many, were skeptical. Fasting seemed drastic, difficult—and we both knew that dieting of any description is generally doomed to fail. But now that we’ve looked at it in depth and tried it ourselves, we are convinced of its remarkable potential. As one of the medical experts interviewed for this book puts it: “There is nothing else you can do to your body that is as powerful as fasting.”
Fasting: An Ancient Idea, a Modern Method
Fasting is nothing new. As we’ll discover in the next chapter, your body is designed to fast. We evolved at a time when food was scarce; we are the product of millennia of feast or famine. The reason we respond so well to intermittent fasting may be because it mimics, far more accurately than three meals a day, the environment in which modern humans were shaped.
Fasting, of course, remains an article of faith for many. The fasts of Lent, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan are just some of the better-known examples. Greek Orthodox Christians are encouraged to fast for 180 days of the year (according to Saint Nikolai of Zicha, “Gluttony makes a man gloomy and fearful, but fasting makes him joyful and courageous”), while Buddhist monks fast on the new moon and full moon of each lunar month.
Many more of us, however, seem to be eating most of the time. We’re rarely ever hungry. But we are dissatisfied. With our weight, our bodies, our health.
Intermittent fasting can put us back in touch with our human selves. It is a route not only to weight loss, but also to long-term health and well-being. Scientists are only just beginning to discover and prove how powerful a tool it can be.
This book is a product of those scientists’ cutting-edge investigations and their impact on our current thinking about weight loss, disease resistance, and longevity. But it is also the result of our personal experiences.
Both are relevant here—the lab and the lifestyle—so we investigate intermittent fasting from two complementary perspectives. First, Michael, who used his body and medical training to test its potential, explains the scientific foundations of intermittent fasting (IF) and the 5:2 diet—something he brought to the world’s attention during the summer of 2012.
Then Mimi offers a practical guide on how to do it safely, effectively, and in a sustainable way, a way that will fit easily into your normal everyday life. She looks in detail at how fasting feels, what you can expect from day to day, what to eat, and when to eat, and provides a host of tips and strategies to help you gain the greatest benefit from the diet’s simple precepts.
As you’ll see below, the FastDiet has changed both of our lives. We hope it will do the same for you.
Michael’s Motivation: A Male Perspective
I am a 55-year-old male, and before I embarked on my exploration of intermittent fasting, I was mildly overweight: at five feet, eleven inches, I weighed around 187 pounds and had a body mass index of 26, which put me into the overweight category. Until my midthirties, I had been slim, but like many people I then gradually put on weight, around one pound a year. This doesn’t sound like much, but over a couple of decades it pushed me up and up. Slowly I realized that I was starting to resemble my father, a man who struggled with weight all his life and died in his early seventies of complications associated with diabetes. At his funeral many of his friends commented on how like him I had become.
While making a documentary for the BBC, I was fortunate enough to have an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan done. This revealed that I am a TOFI—thin on the outside, fat inside. This visceral fat is the most dangerous sort of fat, because it wraps itself around your internal organs and puts you at risk for heart disease and diabetes. I later had blood tests that showed I was heading toward diabetes, and had a cholesterol score that was also way too high. Obviously, I was going to have to do something about this. I tried following standard advice, except it made little difference. My weight and blood profile remained stuck in the “danger ahead” zone.
I had never tried dieting before because I’d never found a diet that I thought would work. I’d watched my father try every form of diet, from Scarsdale through Atkins, from the Cambridge Diet to the Drinking Man’s Diet. He’d lost weight on each one of them, and then within a few months put it all back on, and more.
Then, at the beginning of 2012, I was approached by Aidan Laverty, editor of the BBC science series Horizon, who asked if I would like to put myself forward as a guinea pig to explore the science behind life extension. I wasn’t sure what we would find, but along with producer Kate Dart and researcher Roshan Samarasinghe, we quickly focused on calorie restriction and fasting as a fruitful area to explore.
Calorie restriction (CR) is pretty brutal; it involves eating an awful lot less than a normal person would expect to eat, and doing so every day of your (hopefully) long life. The reason people put themselves through this is because it is the only intervention that has been shown to extend lifespan, at least in animals. There are at least 10,000 CRONies (Calorie Restriction with Optimum Nutrition) worldwide, and I have met quite a number of them. Despite their generally fabulous biochemical profile, I have never been seriously tempted to join their skinny ranks. I simply don’t have the willpower or desire to live permanently on an extreme low-calorie diet.
So I was delighted to discover intermittent fasting (IF), which involves eating fewer calories, but only some of the time. If the science was right, it offered the benefits of CR but without the pain.
I set off around the United States, meeting leading scientists who generously shared their research and ideas with me. It became clear that IF was no fad. But it wouldn’t be as easy as I’d originally hoped. As you’ll see later in the book, there are many different forms of intermittent fasting. Some involve eating nothing for twenty-four hours or longer. Others involve eating a single, low-calorie meal once a day, every other day. I tried both but couldn’t imagine doing either on a regular basis. I found it was simply too hard.
Instead I decided to create and test my own modified version. Five days a week, I would eat normally; on the remaining two I would eat a quarter of my usual calorie intake (that is, 600 calories).
I split the 600 calories in two—around 250 calories for breakfast and 350 calories for supper—effectively fasting for around twelve hours at a stretch. I also decided to split my fasting days: I would fast on Mondays and Thursdays. I became my own experiment.
The program, Eat, Fast, Live Longer, which detailed my adventures with what we were now calling the 5:2 diet, appeared on the BBC during the London Olympics in August 2012. I expected it to be lost in the media frenzy that surrounded the Games, but instead it generated a frenzy of its own. The program was watched by more than 2.5 million people—a huge audience for Horizon—and hundreds of thousands more on YouTube. My Twitter account went into overdrive, my followers tripled; everyone wanted to try my version of intermittent fasting, and they were all asking me what they should do.
The newspapers took up the story. Articles appeared in The Times (London), the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Mail on Sunday. Before long, it was picked up by newspapers all over the world—in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Madrid, Montreal, Islamabad, and New Delhi. Online groups were created, menus and experiences swapped, chat rooms started buzzing about fasting. People began to stop me on the street and tell me how well they were doing on the 5:2 diet. They also e-mailed details of their experiences. Among those e-mails, a surprisingly large number were from doctors. Like me, they had initially been skeptical, but they had tried it for themselves, found that it worked, and had begun suggesting it to their patients. They wanted information, menus, details of the scientific research to scrutinize. They wanted me to write a book. I hedged, procrastinated, then finally found a collaborator, Mimi Spencer, whom I liked and trusted and who has an in-depth knowledge of food. Which is how what you are reading came about.
Michael’s Background
I trained as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and after passing my medical exams, I joined the BBC as a trainee assistant producer. Over the last twenty-five years, I have made numerous science and history documentaries for the BBC, first behind the camera, more recently in front. I was executive producer of QED; Trust Me, I’m a Doctor; and Superhuman. I worked with John Cleese, Jeremy Clarkson, Professor Robert Winston, Sir David Attenborough, and Professor Alice Roberts. I devised and executive-produced many programs for the BBC and the Discovery Channel, including: Pompeii: The Last Day, Supervolcano, and Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction.
As a presenter I have made a dozen series for the BBC, including Medical Mavericks, Blood and Guts, Inside Michael Mosley, Science Story, The Young Ones, Inside the Human Body, and The Truth About Exercise. I am currently making three new series, as well as being a regular science presenter for the BBC’s The One Show.
I have won numerous awards, including being named Medical Journalist of the Year by the British Medical Association.
Mimi’s Motivation: A Female Perspective
I started intermittent fasting on the day I was commissioned to write a feature for The Times about Michael’s Horizon program. It was the first I’d heard of intermittent fasting, and the idea appealed immediately, even to a cynical soul who has spent two decades examining the curious acrobatics of the fashion industry, the beauty business, and the diet trade.
I’d dabbled in diets before—show me a fortysomething woman who hasn’t—losing weight, then losing faith within weeks and piling it all back on. Though never overweight, I’d long been interested in dropping that reluctant seven to ten pounds—the pounds I picked up in pregnancy and somehow never lost. The diets I tried were always too hard to follow, too complicated to implement, too boring, too tough, too single-strand, too invasive, sucking the juice out of life and leaving you with the scraps. There was nothing I found that I could adopt and thread into the context of my life—as a mother, a working woman, a wife.
I’ve argued for years that dieting is a fool’s game, doomed to fail because of the restrictions and deprivations imposed on an otherwise happy life, but this felt immediately different. The scientific evidence was extensive and compelling, and (crucially for me) the medical community was positive. The effects, for Michael and others, were impressive, startling even. In his Horizon documentary, Michael called it the “beginning of something huge . . . which could radically transform the nation’s health.” I couldn’t resist. Nor could I conceive of a reason to wait.
The scientific evidence was extensive and compelling, and (crucially for me) the medical community was positive.
In the months since I wrote the Times feature, I have remained a convert. An evangelist, actually. I’m still “on” the FastDiet now, but I barely notice it. At the outset, I weighed 132 pounds. At five feet, seven inches, my BMI was an okay 21.4. Today, as I write, I weigh 119 pounds, with a BMI of 19.4. That’s a weight off. I feel light, lean, and alive. Fasting has become part of my weekly life, something I do automatically without stressing about it.
I feel light, lean, and alive.
Six months in, I have more energy, more bounce, clearer skin, a greater zest for life. And—it has to be said—new jeans (27-inch waist) and none of my annual bikini dread as summer approaches. But perhaps more important, I know that there’s a long-term gain. I’m doing the best for my body and my brain. It’s an intimate revelation, but one worth sharing.
Mimi’s Background
I have written about fashion, food, and body shape in British national newspapers and magazines for twenty years, starting out at Vogue, followed by The Guardian, The Observer, and the London Evening Standard, where I was named British Fashion Journalist of the Year in 2000. I am currently a columnist for the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine and a regular features writer for The Saturday Times. In 2009 I wrote a book, 101 Things to Do Before You Diet, cataloguing my dismay with fad diets, which seem forever doomed to fail. Intermittent fasting is the only plan I have discovered in two decades that gets the weight off and keeps it off. And the antiaging health benefits? Gravy.
The FastDiet: The Potential, the Promise
We know that for many people, the standard diet advice simply does not work. The FastDiet is a radical alternative. It has the potential to change the way we think about eating and weight loss.
• The FastDiet demands that we think about not just what we eat, but when we eat it.
• There are no complicated rules to follow; the strategy is flexible, comprehensible, and userfriendly.
• There is no daily slog of calorie control—none of the boredom, frustration, or serial deprivation that characterizes conventional diet plans.
• Yes, it involves fasting, but not as you know it; you won’t “starve” on any given day.
• You will still enjoy the foods you love—most of the time.
• Once the weight is off, sticking to the basic program will mean that it stays off.
• Weight loss is only one benefit of the FastDiet. The real dividend is the potential long-term health gains—cutting your risk of a range of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
• You will soon come to understand that it is not a diet. It is much more than that: it is a sustainable strategy for a healthy, long life.
Now you’ll want to understand exactly how we can make these dramatic assertions. In the next chapter, Michael explains the science that makes the FastDiet tick.
Most helpful customer reviews
624 of 648 people found the following review helpful.
A Little Hunger is Healthy? A Revoluntionary Concept for Me
By Raya
I read this book very carefully, since I was VERY skeptical. I had been adhering to the "Eat 5 or 6 small meals" hype so that I could keep my metabolism in fat burning mode. I see now that that's as big a crock as the whole low fat diet scam of the 90s where I ate disgusting Snackwells cookies and other low fat/high sugar processed junk thinking I was doing myself a favor.
But this book completely convinced me that your body doesn't go into the dreaded starvation mode until you have fasted for days or maybe even weeks. Certainly not after one day of low calorie eating. It's just the opposite. A little hunger puts you into fat-burning mode. And I can tell it's working. I've lost 7 of my EXTREMELY stubborn 15 pounds that I've been trying to lose, in just 3 weeks, and it's not just water weight. My measurements are smaller and people are asking me what my secret is! I have more energy on both fast and feast days, and my stamina us up. My exercise instructor said she was amazed at how much stronger I seem lately.
Because of my new understanding of how hunger affects the body, on my feast days I don't feel like I have to rush to eat right when I'm hungry. I actually like to wait until I have a nice big appetite. The food tastes better, and since I'm only eating 3 times a day I can really enjoy that bigger meal. It fulfills me much more than those diet-y little meals I was eating before. I think that's why I always used to fall off the healthy wagon. I was never really satisfied. Also, I don't stuff my face the way I would before if I got too hungry. Before if I happened to get really hungry, I'd pig out, thinking that I deserved to really go crazy since I hadn't eaten all day. Now I just see getting good and hungry as natural, and then I eat a reasonable amount.
And all the little tips in the book really helped me figure out how to make the fasting days fly by. The way I do it is that I drink coffee (with a little unsweetened almond milk and Splenda), Good Earth Tea (iced), lemon water, fizzy water and maybe chicken broth through out my busiest mornings. Then I have scrambled eggs with cheese at 1:00. A sweet potato with Greek yogurt and salsa at 4. Then I go to bed early. The tip I like best is just reminding myself I can have whatever I want tomorrow. Sounds trite, but it works like a charm. I always think I'm going to have a burrito or a huge take-out spaghetti and meatballs, but when the next day comes, my appetite is so small I don't feel like eating it. I also feel so light and healthy that it doesn't even sound appealing. Last week I did have a big old Panda Express lunch and this week I had the spaghetti, but when I stepped on the scale the next morning I was lighter than ever!
But for me, the best part is that I'm not on this awful diet roller-coaster. I used to be "good" for about 2 or 3 days and then I'd be "bad" and ruin it. Then I'd feel guilty so I'd eat more to make myself feel better, then I'd be good again, only to ruin it... This is no way to live! My feelings of self-worth should not be dependent upon what I eat! This new approach isn't about being good or bad. It's just eating or not eating. It's easy for me to not eat when I only have to do it for one day. I don't feel like I'm being "good." I just feel like I'm doing something good for my body. And the next day when I indulge- if I even do, I feel like it's all part of my healthy plan. I just know that this is something I can do forever. I actually look forward to the fasting days as a chance to re-boot. I also like to use the hunger pains to remind me to be live a life of compassion for myself and for others. But that's another story...
1334 of 1386 people found the following review helpful.
Revolutionary Weight Loss Method!
By Lee Mellott
There are many ways to lose weight from counting point to micro-managing carbs. But almost all of them involve eating less calories on a daily basis. The result - you lose weight but let's face it the prospect of eating less every day gets old. And in many cases weight that is shed is quickly put back on.
Enter Dr. Michael Mosley with "The Fast Diet". Dr. Mosley a science researcher, investigated how fasting can result in enormous benefits such as increased longevity, lower blood pressure, improved cholesterol and much more. He presented his findings in the British television BBC special documentary "Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer".
Instead of a pure fast Dr. Mosley found that you could enjoy many benefits from eating a reduced calorie diet just 2 days a week and eating normally the other 5. For women about 500 calories and for men about 600 on the 2 lower calorie days. Based on the documentary thousands of British people tried eating this way and found it to be fast, effective and much easier than a traditional diet.
In the book, "The Fast Diet", Dr. Mosley presents the science behind how and why the diet works. His co-author Mini Spencer shares menu plans and tips to make the plan user friendly. The book also includes color photographs so you get a feel for what a low calorie day looks like. And there are inspirational accounts from people who are using the diet, losing weight and enjoying greater health and renewed vitality.
A typical 500 calorie day on the plan might include a small apple, small mango and small boiled egg (223 calories) for breakfast and a tuna, bean and garlic salad for dinner (267 calories). Or you could spread your calories between lunch and dinner or eat them at one main meal. The plan is very flexible. The days you are not on the plan you eat normally, including high fat foods, without counting calories. You might think that on the feed days people would go crazy but research has shown that people eat only a little more than what they would normally eat. Knowing that you can have pretty much what you like most days of the week makes sticking to the plan so much easier than traditional diets.
Based on the documentary (before the book was released in the U.S.) I decided to try the plan making up simple 500 calorie meals and I was amazed at how much easier it is than traditional dieting. Variations of the plan are easy to do also such as every other day, 4:3 etc. And if you miss a day you simply get back on track the next. On fast days, I like to go as far into the day as possible without eating so I have a cup of espresso in the morning, an egg on sandwich thin with berries around noon, small snack mid-afternoon and a protein with veggies for dinner. It has been surprisingly easy to do. I dropped 5 pounds fast!
The benefits of following 5:2 are huge from what we can see visually i.e. weight loss to what we can't i.e. our bodies inner workings. And best of all many find that it is so much easier to diet just a couple days a week than every day. You really do get used to it. Once you have achieved your desired body weight you can adjust the plan to one day a week if desired or eat a few more calories on the diet days.
Side note - I purchased the Kindle version of the book and the formatting is excellent. The menu plan is hyper-linked to the recipes and the color photos are clear.
Overall if you are struggling with traditional diets and want to improve your health, this book, "The Fast Diet" gets my highest recommendation!
376 of 408 people found the following review helpful.
Been on this diet for over seven months and I still get to eat pizzas and burritos!
By Jayson Makoto Chun
I have been on this diet since August 2012 and lost over 35 lbs while still enjoying reasonable portions of foods such as pizzas, burritos, or ramen. I was skeptical when I first read about this diet after stumbling across it on the BBC website. Eat only 600 calories a day for two days out of the week? Still, it was time for a change. Despite attempting to eat right every day, continuous grazing on food to supposedly boost my metabolism, and regular gym workouts, I had gained fat until I was at 214 lbs (and I'm 5'8). Plus, a doctor's visit showed me I was suffering from high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
So I decided to give this diet a try for at least a week. Breakfast was scrambled eggs with slices of chicken breast, and then I anxiously waited for dinner. My stomach began rumbling by 12:00 pm, but the hunger subsided after I downed a cup of black coffee. I did feel a bit weak, but keeping busy and more coffee helped me make it to a dinner. This was a revelation - I would not die from a day without food!
Interestingly, the next day I did not feel as hungry as I thought I would be. I then realized this was a plan I could do for the long-term. I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app to keep track of calories, and still ate what I wanted on non-fast days, but in reasonable portions. Dr. Michael Mosley advises high protein, low glycemic index foods on fast days, but I took it further and reduced sugars and starches, and boosted my intake of green vegetables even on most non-fasting days. I continued working out when fasting, and noticed that my running stamina improved markedly.
Much of what Dr. Mosley writes in The Fast Diet mirrored my personal experience. For example, hunger does diminish after a few weeks of intermittent fasting. As this book notes, this diet will lead to long-term changes toward food. Well, I looked forward to eating green veggies and avoiding decadent foods on days I could eat normally. I still eat junk food, but only when I am hungry, not bored. Although the Fast Diet focuses on two meals each fasting day, I would eat one large dinner because a single meal was more satisfying than several small ones.
This book also suggests getting support from family and friends. Unfortunately, I did not tell others about my diet because it had not made its way to the U.S. When I first did reveal my fasting, I was bombarded with well-meaning advice on how it was a dangerous fad diet. So instead, I joined a Facebook group of Alternate Day Fasters who were mostly from the UK. This group was so helpful for advice and support.
Soon, my pants began sagging off my waist and others were asking me if I was losing weight. I went to the doctor in early December and weighed in at 184 lbs, about a 30 lb loss in just four months! And my cholesterol and blood pressure had reduced to reasonable levels. The doctor told me to stop losing weight, since I had more muscle than average, so I could disregard the BMI or height-weight charts. Also my body fat % went down from 25% to 20% so I had lost mostly fat. Since then, I have maintained my weight doing two moderate fasts of 1,200 calories each week.
In the end, how do I evaluate this book? First of all, this diet works! It is easy to stick to long term for all-or-nothing types like me. Instead of reducing calories a little every day, I greatly reduce calories for two days a week, and eat normally on the others. And I love this diet's flexibility - no more going to parties and having to decline food.
As for the cons, similar information and other 5:2 recipes are available online so one does not necessarily have to buy this book. Still The Fast Diet is recommended for those who lack the time to find the information online. Also, one must also avoid the trap of overeating on non-fasting days. While I did have days of indulgence, most of my normal eating days were just that - normal. Please do not take this diet as a license to overeat unhealthily every non-fasting day.
Also, Dr. Mosley's 5:2 has not been the subject of as much research as has been done for Alternate daily fasting, where one fasts every other day. Most research on fasting's benefits was done on mice, not humans. Still, we are rapidly learning more about fasting and several studies have already come out since Mosley's Horizon Documentary, making the information in this book already slightly outdated, (Google Dr. Krista Varady for more details).
In the end, please get your doctor's approval if you decide to try the The Fast Diet. I wish you the best of luck and hope your experience will be as fruitful as mine.
Update (June 17, 2013): One of the mass media criticisms of the Fast Diet is that long-term weight maintenance would be difficult through fasting. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am at my desired weight and find maintaining my weight so easy! It has now been 10 months since starting this eating plan and I have lost another 10 lbs since I wrote this review (for a total weight loss of around 45 lbs). Occasional fasts have become part of my lifestyle and it is so easy to do one or two fast days a week. And yes, I am still eating the forbidden foods, so I am amazed at how easy it is to maintain this weight!
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