I CAME UP WITH THE 5:2 DIET AND REVERSED MY TYPE 2 DIABETES
Dr Michael Mosley, 62, is a TV medic and bestselling author of The 5:2 Diet and The
Fast800. He lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife of 39 years, Clare, a GP. They have four grown-up children in their twenties.
In 2012 I was 13 and a half stone, had a 36-inch waist and type 2 diabetes. I made a film called Live
Fast, Live Longer based on the idea of intermittent fasting and came up with the 5:2 diet concept. I tested it on myself and shed nearly 1½ stone, my waist dropped to 34 inches and my type 2 diabetes reversed.
Now, I eat a mainly Mediterranean diet and practise time-restricted eating, which is fasting for 14 hours and eating for 10, so Clare and I stop eating at 8pm and start again at 10am the next day.
It was actually the Buddha who first said: “Stop eating after lunch and don’t eat again until the next morning and you will be more focused and have better selfcontrol.” It also helps the body switch from sugar burning as fuel to fat burning, which only happens after 10 hours of fasting.
Workout week: active commuting with a few sprints thrown in
I didn’t start getting fit until I was 55. Now, I wake up and do 50 squats, press-ups and lunges. Then I incorporate an active commute into my day, cycling a mile and a half to the train station on my fold-up bicycle, which
I take on the train, then around London between meetings (even in the rain).
A few years ago, I made a programme called The Truth About Exercise
and came across a highintensity interval-training (HIIT) system where you do three lots of 20-second sprints, three times a week, which I still do, as I am cycling home. I go flat out for 20 seconds up the hills and then recover for about a minute. The idea is to get your heart rate up to about 150, then let it drop to 120, repeating that a few times.
Typical day’s eating:
• Breakfast: Omelette with lentils, onions and vegetables or scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Tea and/or a coffee with milk.
• Lunch: Last night’s leftovers, such as quinoa and vegetable stew, a Greek salad or one of our Fast800 meal-replacement shakes with water (they’re high in nutrients, protein and fibre and low in sugar).
• Snack: Not often, but when I do it’s a small handful of unsalted nuts – almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts.
• Dinner: Smoked haddock with vegetables and lentils or chicken and vegetable stir-fry with brown rice or a tomato-based bolognese sauce with a little mince, bulked up with kidney beans and lentils and served on courgetti spaghetti with something fermented such as sauerkraut or kimchi (which Clare makes herself). Baked apples or chopped pear and full-fat Greek yogurt for pudding.