CHANGE YOUR HABITS, CHANGE YOUR LIFE
The 5:2 diet creator has teamed up with the Mail for this exclusive series, based on his new Fast 800 Health Journal, to help you follow his latest diet in which you initially eat 800 calories a day
Food is embedded into almost every aspect of our lives. Not only does it provide essential fuel for our bodies but it also offers an opportunity to bring people together and provides a way of showing love and receiving it. Yet food can also be a false friend; something we turn to when stressed or depressed and which we can become dependent upon or even addicted to. We’re surrounded by temptation, which is hard to resist. On top of this, many of the foods we do eat (processed and heavily promoted by the food industry) can hijack the chemistry of our brains and our hormones.
So it’s little wonder that losing weight can be such a struggle for many people, or that changing the habits of a lifetime can take serious thought and effort, particularly in the early stages.
A PLAN TO SUIT YOUR LIFE
That’s why I have teamed up with the Irish Mail on Sunday and Irish Daily Mail to bring you an exclusive new series based on our Fast 800 Health Journal to help you kick unhealthy eating patterns, lose weight successfully (and keep it off) and reap numerous health benefits besides. To start you off, I have created a special edition here, exclusively for
Magazine readers, to pull out and keep. It will help you record your progress and identify any weak spots or unhelpful patterns of behaviour.
And, because enjoying mouthwatering meals is also a vital part of creating a healthy lifestyle you’ll want to maintain, we’ll be serving up a selection of inspiring recipes by my wife Dr Clare Bailey and food writer Justine Pattison, for Fast 800 breakfasts, brunches, lunches and dinners. There are eight in today’s Journal, and they continue next week in special pullouts in the Irish Daily Mail.
Speaking from personal experience I can say they are not only good for your waistline – but they’re delicious and filling too!
One of the reasons my best-selling Fast 800 diet has been embraced by so many people all over the world since I introduced it last year is that it’s easy to adopt. Not only does it help you to lose weight rapidly at the beginning – which is highly motivating – but the principles of intermittent fasting, on which I based my original 5:2 diet, are flexible enough to fit into almost any lifestyle.
The Fast 800 is rooted in a few simple rules that help you to shed unwanted pounds and trigger metabolic changes that can bring important health benefits including putting type 2 diabetes into remission and reducing the risk of heart disease and other chronic conditions. It’s based on limiting yourself to 800 calories on fast days – low enough to induce mild ketosis, a natural metabolic state when the body burns fat instead of sugar as an energy source. However, it’s also enough to ensure you get the nutrients you need.
It’s up to you whether you kickstart your regimen with the Fast 800 rapid weight-loss stage, eating 800 calories a day for an initial period of time, or take the more gradual 5:2 intermittent fasting approach – eat freely five days a week, with two 800-calorie fast days – which helped me to lose weight quickly and reverse my own type 2 diabetes in 2012 (see How It Works panel opposite).
WHY IT HELPS TO WRITE IT DOWN
Whatever you decide, you need to start with changing your habits – and research shows that keeping a journal is a particularly useful tool. Not only does it help with weight loss, but it also makes us more mindful of what we eat, how we eat it, and why. A study in the US by Kaiser Permanente’s Center For Health Research, one of the largest and longest weightloss maintenance trials ever conducted, found that those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat (and, don’t forget, drink) heightens awareness and encourages people to consume fewer calories.