Road testing the 5:2 diet

I’m not a fan of diets and I’m definitely not a fan of being hangry. I winced when my husband came home declaring he was fasting 2 days a week and eating normally on the other 5 days to try to lose some weight.

I (lovingly) teased the fact he’d starve himself one day only to eat a bacon and egg roll the next.

But as time went on, he swore there was something in this diet. He claimed he felt energised, experienced mental clarity and religiously lost 0.5kg a week.

Whether out of curiosity or solidarity, I decided to eat my words (they’re calorie free after all) and give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen?

The 5:2 is a type of intermittent fasting where you eat the way you normally would for 5 days a week and then fast (eating just 500 to 600 calories/2000 to 2500 kilojoules) for 2 days.

It’s not rocket science.

But instead of restricting calories by a small amount every day, you go hard 2 days a week by eating just 25% of your daily needs (500 calories/2000 kJ for women and 600 calories/2500 kJ for men).

Advocates say this break from regular eating gives the body time to fully exhaust its supply of glycogen (glucose stored in your liver) and start burning fat.

While research shows you won’t lose more weight on the 5:2 diet than on other calorie-restrictive eating plans, many prefer fasting for 2 days over a calorie-controlled diet every day.¹

I’m not sure why they call it ‘fasting’. Time goes ridiculously slowly when you’re hungry!

Safe to say my first fast day was a slow struggle.

I love to eat breakfast and usually a delicious carbohydrate-rich bowl of muesli topped with Greek yoghurt and stewed fruit fuels my morning. But with a whopping 625 calories, that healthy brekky breaks the bank for the entire day. So, I skip it completely.

By 10am, I’m ravenous. My cup of coffee (no milk or sugar!) and multiple glasses of water leave me seriously unsatisfied.

Am I hangry? Yes. So, I busy myself to take my mind off it. At midday I eat 2 boiled eggs (approximately 120 calories/500kJ). It’s fair to say I’m hardly stuffed, but let’s be real: I’m in no danger of starvation either. And this is just the beginning.

Carrot and cucumber sticks, herbal tea, soda water followed throughout the day, with a vegetable stir fry for dinner. It really wasn’t that bad.

Once I got over the fact that I wasn’t eating at regular times and I was pretty hungry on my fasting days, I felt energised and lighter on my feet.

At work and home my productivity improved. A new feeling of mental clarity meant I was getting things done more efficiently than ever, even if it was partly to avoid thinking about food.

While it’s easy to write fasting off as another fad, there’s a growing body of research suggesting there are long-term health benefits including improved:

• cardiovascular health
• cellular health
• blood pressure
• blood lipid levels
• resting heart rate
• insulin sensitivity
• abdominal obesity
• physical function
• balance and coordination.²

Like any diet there are pros and cons, and some days were easier than others. One of the biggest challenges was to keep up regular exercise on fast days, even just gentle walks.

I found exercising in the morning helped me avoid afternoon slumps where the excuses and mental barrier of feeling too hungry to exercise would take over.

We’d cook separate meals for the kids and the adults (which required a fair bit of planning), and trying to make sure dinner for us was satisfying and very low calorie was often tricky.

Personally, the 5:2 diet worked for me in the short term.

I lost a small amount of weight, maybe a kilo every couple of weeks, but more importantly, I felt fantastic. For me, it was a great opportunity to reset my eating habits.

Having just 500 calories a day for 2 days a week makes you acutely aware of how much energy you are consuming.

But once you break the habit, which can be as simple as skipping a few fast days for social events, it’s hard to get back on the wagon.

And it seems I’m not alone here. A randomised controlled trial of the 5:2 diet found 74% of participants stuck to the diet at 6 weeks. But this dropped to 31% at 6 months and 22% at one year.³

While the 5:2 is not a long-term sustainable diet for me, it did help me eat more mindfully and really enjoy the food I was eating. Yes, even the occasional bacon and egg roll. Everything in moderation, right?

Forget fasting if you:

• are pregnant or breastfeeding
• are living with diabetes
• are on medications
• have experienced disordered eating.

Always consult a GP or healthcare professional before starting any new eating plan or diet.