Two weeks to your two piece!

Lose 7 lb fast AND turn back the clock thanks to the revolutionary 2-meal-a-day beach diet by fitness guru MAX LOWERY

The quest for the body beautiful can never be completely painless. Positive transformations do require effort. But my work as a personal trainer to the stars has taught me it is possible to make significant improvements — fast!

In last week’s Inspire I outlined how my diet and exercise plan could see you lose a stone in just a month, ensuring you look great and feel even better on the beach this summer.

My plan is simple and effective. You just skip a meal at either end of your day (breakfast or dinner) then enjoy two larger meals and one optional snack per day, and exercise four times a week, ideally on an empty stomach.

This is based on the principles of TRE (time-restricted eating), which extends the time between the last meal of one day and the first of the next. It’s about restricting how often you eat — you have roughly the same calorie intake, over a shorter period.

You can enjoy a wealth of delicious foods (see recipe plan below) and eat until you are full. Most of my clients chose to miss breakfast and exercise in the morning for maximum benefit.

Breakfast used to be a luxury. It was only in 1895 when John harvey Kellogg created Cornflakes that the meal became popular. Adverts started calling it ‘the most important meal of the day’, and experts warned skipping it slows your metabolism (and makes you more likely to gain weight).

But it takes 72 hours of fasting before your metabolism starts to slow. Short-term fasting actually increases your metabolic rate by up to 14 per cent, helping you burn more calories.

After a short time on this plan, you will notice your hunger levels reduce. Fasting regulates hunger hormones and improves your sensitivity to appetite- suppressant hormones, letting you ignore snacking triggers and only notice real hunger, which typically occurs 16 to 24 hours after eating.

This is an empowering benefit of my plan. You will become in tune with your body, no longer counting down time until you can next eat.

DIET YOURSELF YOUNGER

IF YOUR diet regularly raises your blood sugar, your body constantly has to secrete the hormone insulin to bring the levels down. Your body reacts to insulin in a similar way it would to a drug — you don’t need much to feel its effects at first, but after a while you need more for the same effect as your body is less responsive to it.

This is ‘insulin resistance’, a contributing factor to type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and stroke, high blood pressure, kidney disease and Alzheimer’s.

But by extending the gap between meals, you give your body the chance to heal. Studies show fasting and exercise are the most effective ways to induce autophagy, your body’s natural recycling system.

Cells create membranes that probe for scraps of dead, diseased or worn- out cells to cannibalise and use resulting molecules for energy or to make new cell parts. This can slow cancerous growths and stop metabolic dysfunction such as obesity and diabetes — contributors to heart disease.

Fasting like this has a powerful anti-ageing effect — so you’ll look as good as you feel.