Yes, the terminology seems to be quite important. It's like the way 'diet' has come to mean ' a way to lose weight' rather than 'how to achieve a healthy lifestyle'. I agree to an extent, that it can go hand in glove, but a lot of the research on intermittent fasting seems to concentrate on health benefits, reduction in risk factors, improved healing processes, and you tend to find weight loss is also an effect. Understandably the hype is around weight loss. To achieve a faster weight loss some prefer to calorie count on feast/non-fast/normal days, whatever we call them. If this makes a further difference to health benefits I dont think anybody knows yet. I think Dr. Moseley settled on 5:2 for compliance reasons, 4 day fasting was effective but not sustainable, alternate day fasting he found difficult as with Calorie restriction on Optimal Nutrition (CHRONies).
So you could say that Dr.M looked at 5:2 as more sustainable, and appeared to have similar health benefits, ...and associated weight loss. The basic concept for improving health was, I think, eat normally for 5 days a week. I read that as, if you normally eat pizza all day, then that is your norm, yet by reducing that on 2 days a week there will be health benefits. In its simplest form I think that is what 5:2 is BUT....it is moving on to where people are looking in more detail at individual daily calorie intake, and working out how to adapt this regime to their own needs, be it becoming more healthy and/or losing weight. So there is probably no right or wrong answer to the above question. If you love eating pizza, then you will benefit from having two days when you restrict this, if you want to lose weight regularly then monitor what you eat at all times.
Please, please, please I'm not an expert (who is?), I'm not saying 'do it this way', I'm not saying 'I'm right!'. I am fascinated by learning so much from the way people approach this, I have worked in psychology for many years and that raises a final question for me :-
It seems that most weight reducing diets fail because once you get down to goal weight or just get fed up with it you stop counting calories and the weight gradually goes back on. I am interested in 5:2 because, in its simplest form, it seems to take away the stigma of monitoring food intake and begins to give confidence that we maybe could trust that we can eat without guilt, have a cake and not feel bad about ourselves. It will, of course, be easier for some than others and the whole diet issue has entered our psyche as a complex area fraught with failure. But just maybe 5:2 does have the potential for us to look at things in a different way.
So you could say that Dr.M looked at 5:2 as more sustainable, and appeared to have similar health benefits, ...and associated weight loss. The basic concept for improving health was, I think, eat normally for 5 days a week. I read that as, if you normally eat pizza all day, then that is your norm, yet by reducing that on 2 days a week there will be health benefits. In its simplest form I think that is what 5:2 is BUT....it is moving on to where people are looking in more detail at individual daily calorie intake, and working out how to adapt this regime to their own needs, be it becoming more healthy and/or losing weight. So there is probably no right or wrong answer to the above question. If you love eating pizza, then you will benefit from having two days when you restrict this, if you want to lose weight regularly then monitor what you eat at all times.
Please, please, please I'm not an expert (who is?), I'm not saying 'do it this way', I'm not saying 'I'm right!'. I am fascinated by learning so much from the way people approach this, I have worked in psychology for many years and that raises a final question for me :-
It seems that most weight reducing diets fail because once you get down to goal weight or just get fed up with it you stop counting calories and the weight gradually goes back on. I am interested in 5:2 because, in its simplest form, it seems to take away the stigma of monitoring food intake and begins to give confidence that we maybe could trust that we can eat without guilt, have a cake and not feel bad about ourselves. It will, of course, be easier for some than others and the whole diet issue has entered our psyche as a complex area fraught with failure. But just maybe 5:2 does have the potential for us to look at things in a different way.
