Fast & the FURIOUS

JEREMY JUMPS ON THE LATEST WEIGHT-LOSS BANDWAGON

Apologies if this week’s missive seems a little bit tense or moody. It’s just that I’m on a fast day.

Yes, like a good, overweight lemming, I am falling in line and trying the latest weight-loss fad, the 5:2 diet. There may be people reading this who are not aware of this diet – these would be people who don’t need to lose weight, probably don’t like food and are generally reviled by the rest of us.

For those people, allow me to explain. The 5:2 diet is intermittent fasting – two days of the week you starve, five days of the week you pig-out.

Okay, they’re probably not the exact instructions, but you get the idea. In fact, on your fast days, you don’t abstain completely, you simply restrict your food to a small fraction of your daily requirement. This fraction is known as “stuff all” and that’s why I’m grumpy.

The two days don’t have to be consecutive, most of us 5:2ers split them up. I currently schedule Monday and Thursday to be enjoyment-free drudges along starvation street.

Tuesday and Friday seem to be my favourite days of the week at the moment.

Not sure why.

These fasting days affect me as most diets do, the overwhelming effect being that because I am unable to have food, I constantly think about it. I spend hours staring at our pantry considering how little I am allowed, how much I miss it and how much I’m going to enjoy it tomorrow.

And I can’t resort to a glass of wine to distract myself as booze is not allowed. Fast days do not pass quickly. They are poorly named.

The other behaviour I am exhibiting common to any diet is this – I am looking for loopholes. I was very disappointed to find out it’s frowned upon to race to the fridge for a four-course meal on the stroke of midnight.

Not allowed. You must wait until breakfast the following day before you dive into porridge on toast on pancakes.

So, in fact, you’re fasting for something over 30 hours! How can fat possibly hang around?

Having said that, I think this might be the diet for me, simply because it’s only two days of the week. Sure, those two days are long, barren stretches of torture, but at least all the suffering is bunched up into those 48 hours. There are another 120 hours of mindless food-fun every week.

And it might actually work! Because even if I’m a bad boy on my non-fasting days, it’s a struggle to catch up on all the calories I’ve missed during my fast days. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I’ve only just started this madness, so I have no real measure of its effectiveness. Given my inability to understand the concept of “moderation”, I suspect the results may be negligible. I’ll keep you posted.

I hope this column has made sense, the whole time I’ve been writing it, I’ve been thinking about doughnuts.