Sticking to a diet/life style choice

I LOVE my food, I have a terribly bad sweet tooth but I’m also crazy about a lot of savoury food too, although I’m also a huge food snob!

My mum is a natural nutritionist and is always trying out new things to see how her health (and often ours) benefits.  As I am currently living at home I get the benefit of a healthy home cooked meal every evening and if I’m home during the day a carrot juice for breakfast and a freshly prepared salad for lunch.  I know when I eat the food my mum prepares I look and feel healthier and fitter.  I also know that as soon as I move out I’ll not stick to the healthy yet strict diet she lives on!  I like my “treats” and I am not very good at controlling how much of them I eat!  This is something I know I need to grow out of!

My mum’s latest introduction to the family diet is the 5:2 diet.  This entails eating 500 calories a day two days a week.  The rest of the week you eat as normal.  I’ve now been doing this diet for four weeks, according to my way in this morning I’ve lost around 8lbs in weight in that time.  Which obviously proves that it works!

There are other benefits to the diet, studies show that it reduces risk of heart disease, reduces the risk of cancer and slows the possibility of Alzheimers, improvements in blood pressure and cholesterol levels (this was also noted by our neighbour who said it was the only thing which reduced his cholesterol levels after trying many other things).  There have been a couple of books written about it, the creators of http://thefastdiet.co.uk/why-fast/ being one of them giving all the facts, figures and research about it.

The benefits I have noticed are that it overall reduces my appetite which stops me from the snacking I’m prone to do and of course the weight loss.  I have often tried to avoid eating carbs into the evening as I always notice that my stomach is flatter when I wake up the following morning if I haven’t and two days of not eating carbs certainly makes me feel trim!

However, the first couple of weeks I REALLY struggled, especially as we have been doing the diet on two consecutive days, if I’ve had a particularly long shift I’ve been incredibly hungry and barely managed to keep up with it!  A couple of spoonfuls of soya yoghurt have helped keep me going, that and copious amounts of water to stop me thinking I’m hungry!  This week however I didn’t really notice it, I will find out next week whether or not that was related to the fact I have a horrid cold!

People have asked how I manage to find things to eat that keep me under 500 calories.  I mentioned before the carrot juice on a morning which according to the “myfitnesspal” app is only 90 calories for an 8oz serving. then a salad with a basic protein like tuna or egg for lunch (of course without any mayonnaise or dressings!) and evening meal consisting of a lentil stew or steamed veg with white fish seem to work quite well.  It does take planning of course!

An example of a low cal meal – Lentil and Veg stew, yummier than it looks!

So, if you are looking for a diet that is particularly intense for two days a week but allows you to return to your usual 1500-2000 calories for the rest of the week I would recommend it.  I will have to see however how much I manage to keep it up during the month my parents are in France and I am (fingers crossed) starting a full time job!