THE THING IS...

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Two Meals A Day

What: Two meals a day. So, not three, not five (and not seven, Khloe Kardashian). Just two, and preferably not including breakfast. Bye-bye to ‘the most important meal...’

Why: Because fasting is good for us — it reboots the immune system, keeps energy levels stable, may even slow down the aging process and, most importantly for some, leads to faster weight loss. The idea is that breaking our full food intake for each day into two meals rather than the traditional three, builds in a natural fasting period, but without that being too long-drawn-out or intense.

Why Now: Because basically this is the new 5:2 diet (that’s the one where you eat what you want for five days a week, and restrict to 500-600 calories on two days), and brings the benefits of a fast, but without the misery of calorie restriction.

How: The thing here is to ‘trick’ the body into going into fasting mode but without suffering the deprivation of too many food-less hours, or indeed having to endure tiny portions of low-cal grub. So you eat the same as usual (preferably healthy stuff, not a heap of cake), just broken into two meals — ideally lunch and dinner — with a circa-16-hour fast period in the middle, for much of which time you are asleep.

Who: Presumably Philip Schofield and Jennifer Lopez, both fans of the 5:2, are going to like this one. Instagram and workout king Max Lowery is a big advocate. Joanne Lumley has been doing it for years without knowing it was ‘a thing’

— she routinely skips breakfast — while the ancient Greeks and Romans thought that any more than two meals a day was gluttony.