The FastDay Forum

Interesting to receive a free pull out in today's Mail for the "Two Day diet". Little detail so far apart from the fact that they recommend consecutive days to fast, and the rest of the time a low calorie, low carb, high protein diet. Developed by doctors at Birmingham University, it reports the same health benefits as the Fast/5:2. Is this somebody else jumping on the bandwagon or a separate research project?

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=846

Breast Cancer researchers at Manchester. Harvie, M if you want to search by author.

I was really dissappointed by the pull out, it was half hearted, no real information in it and it was just 4 pages so you can record results.

Typical press. So glad we have this forum where the emphasis is on support and shared experience, and glad when we don't use the word diet. Surely a diet is a transient thing,whereas this is a change of eating habits for life.

If you google this there's plenty of info on the net about it - very informative article in the sun today online. Seems to be very similar in principle to the 5:2 except it advocates the 2 days be done consecutively. On these days you are allowed 2 pints of milk which can be swapped for other low fat dairy produce, one piece of fruit and 4 portions of veg or salad. No carbs. Rest of the week it's a heathy Mediterranean diet of about 1800 cals. Also referred to as the milk diet. Supposed to protect against breast cancer. Personally, I think it's just another version of intermittent fasting. think I will stick with Dr Mosley for now. It's easy and it's working!! Tell you what though, weight watchers must be worried... Ha ha!

Having scanned over the article this morning it seems that as well as consecutive fast days there's a need to eat low carbs etc on feast days. This sound very much like any other diet and would be difficult to keep up long term. Haven't read it properly yet so maybe I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick! Long live 5:2 I say, with treat days included

I agree. The more complicated it gets, the harder it becomes long term. That's the beauty of the 5:2 after all.

"jumping on the bandwagon"

It seems to be the considered response of the authors quoted by Dr M in "The Fast Diet". One of which (Dr Michelle Harvie) is mentioned many times in Dr M's book and has publications on PubMed dealing with diet and Cancer.

Rather than jumping on the band wagon, this is an opportunity to hear it directly from the horses mouth, so to speak. Hopefully, without some of Dr Ms filtration.

The Mail is running a series this week, it will be interesting to follow what is revealed....

[carorees]

Dr M has written about it on the fast diet website.

Having scanned over the article this morning it seems that as well as consecutive fast days there's a need to eat low carbs etc on feast days.

The low carb days are the two fast days - it's Intermittent Carbohydrate Reduction - the rest of the week is ad lib Mediterranean style.

At least that's what Dr Harvie published, can't speak to what teenage scribblers have mangled it into.

Similarly the "milk diet" was the previous well publicised two day per week energy restriction approach tested by Dr Harvie and published some 10 years ago as a paper and a fund raising book initiative.

Might be helpful if we can differentiate between the two approaches of Dr Harvie and from the 3rd approach of Dr Mosley

The direct link to what Dr M has just written about the Dr Harvie's new Two Day Diet ('2D' I think is a good shorthand) is here: http://thefastdiet.co.uk/the-2-day-diet/

Thanks for the poster link PhilT - to Dr Harvie's recent trial. It's a pity (and absurd) that it doesn't have a date. As Dr M writes, it is based on comparing 3 diet regimes all of which involve calorie restriction. None of them seem quite to match Dr Harvie's new 2D. IMO after that trial they have tweaked the formula again to come up with something better, which is good but does mean that the new 2D has not been tested itself.

Another link to a piece about the diet and the forthcoming book is here. It is not the same as Dr Harvie's previous (1 year ago!) 'milk diet' (here) that has been mentioned above.

The new 2D diet apparently does not count calories at all. On the two consecutive days you are restricted to a list of mainly protein-rich foods (which? It's a secret! I guess you have to buy the book, or maybe the Daily Mail?), and the rest of the week you eat a 'Mediterranean diet' with olive oil, fish, fruit, poultry, wholemeal pasta, brown rice, vegetables, potatoes, occasional red meat and wholemeal bread, all the while just keeping an eye on the size of your portions (source).

The underlying idea of 2D is very similar to 5:2 but I see these differences which all of us will have views about:

1. two consecutive days restricted diet
2. don't count calories, instead focus on what foodstuffs you can/can't eat
3. aimed at lowering carbohydrate intake, especially (but not only) on the two days
4. you may have to modify your ordinary diet somewhat or substantially on 2D, whereas 5:2 is '5 days as normal'

Is milk required, permitted or discouraged in 2D?

I welcome corrections or additions to the above of course!

In fairness the poster I linked would have been nailed to a display board at a conference, so the date would have been obvious to the reader at the time which was December 2011. There was quite a press splash at the time and the embargo was lifted as MSNBC or someone jumped the gun (see Google etc).

The previous milky diet was Intermittent Energy Restriction published in 2010 in full as a scientific paper.

Harvie differentiates the approaches IER = intermittent energy restriction, CER = continuous energy restriction from the 2010 paper (energy = calories) and in the poster uses ICER = intermittent energy and carbohydrate restriction, ICR = intermittent carbohydrate restriction and DER = daily energy restriction (same as CER in previous paper). Perhaps we should use the terminology too, before calories and carbs all blurs into one.

The diet description is vague in the poster..

ICER 25% energy restriction
2 days / week: <40g
carbohydrate,
~600kcal/day
5 days Ad lib
Mediterranean diet

ICR 2 days / week :<40g
carbohydrate day,
unlimited protein MUFA
and PUFA fats
5 days Ad lib
Mediterranean diet

NB ICR did not restrict calories on the two days, only carbs. Typically low carb eating reduces calories anyway due to the omission of a major food group and the filling effects of protein and fats.

just to add that there was another "breast cancer diet" book some 7 years ago - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genesis-Breast- ... 1405093463

also from Genesis and Michele Harvie. http://www.genesisuk.org/media-centre/a ... earch.html has some links and I dare say searching their site will pull out other resources from the past.

Thanks Phil for the date. So do you think 2011-trial's ICR = the new Two Day Diet (2D)? Which would at least mean that they can point to a clinical study of 2D. As Dr M has written, it does sound like Atkins-lite...

So do you think 2011-trial's ICR = the new Two Day Diet (2D)? Which would at least mean that they can point to a clinical study of 2D. As Dr M has written, it does sound like Atkins-lite...

I suspect 2D will be ICR, yes. The poster doesn't show any statistically significant difference between ICR and ICER so I would expect the former to be promoted as simpler, more sustainable, less likely to inflame the over-eaters etc. A single rule, no more than 40g of carbohydrates for 2 days a week, and eat "good fats" and protein until satisfied.

I wish her groups had been better stratified so there wasn't such a difference in baseline BMI, but at least there were no men in it messing up the s.d.