The 5:2 Diet

Hello readers!

Since breaking up from college I've not been as active as I used to be. Sitting home eating junk really had caught up with me so I decided I wanted to get back in shape over the summer.

After hearing about the crazily popular 5:2 Diet, which all the celebrities had been doing I decided to give it a go. 

If your not aware of the 5:2 Diet, basically it's this 'new' way to lose weight reasonably fast, and all that's involved is eating normally for 5 days, and by normally I mean within the daily calorie limit, which is 2000 for women and 2500 for men. Then for the other 2 days in the week you have to eat just 500 calories (600 for men).  That's it!

Now as a woman this means on one of the days you eat 500 calories you are effectively eating 1500 less. So in a week you should have totaled a loss of 3000 calories . 

3500 calories equals a pound of body weight, so theoretically  you should nearly be losing a pound a week if you stick to the plan and keep active.

With all this in mind I thought, great! sounds easy! - I mean getting to eat what you like within the limit for 5 days a week seemed brilliant. 

So let me explain how it all went for me.

My first week was really difficult. I didn't think it would be so hard to stick to 500 calories in a day, but it really was. I didn't worry though, as according to all the articles and stories I read on this diet getting used to eating this little was the hard part, but in time it got easier, apparently!

With a goal in mind, I didn't give in and I stuck to the plan and didn't eat over the 500. I spread the 2 days over the week so I could 'recover' kind of thing and it was great knowing the next day you could eat normally again. BUT, and this is a big one. This is where everything went wrong for me. 

After about 2 weeks of strictly following the diet I started to flag. After the days I was eating 500 I was feeling so hungry, not to mention moody, and I basically made up for what I hadn't eaten the day before, therefore defeating the object! Maybe I have no will power but I just felt like I needed to eat and eat. 

I think that maybe given time I would really have adjusted to the plan but for the first attempt, I didn't succeed. 

Nevertheless this doesn't mean it won't work for others - As I said there are many celebrities praising this diet and I have read many success stories; but it just wasn't for me. I think in future I will just stick to shaving a few hundred calories off my diet each day, instead of starving myself twice a week! 

For those wanting information on the 5:2 diet click here

Please leave a comment If you've tried this diet, or have any thoughts. 

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