The FastDay Forum

Mainly about the use of "clinically proven" in the context of the Two Day Diet (carb limited, Breast Cancer diet)

http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/04/the-2-day-diet/

While I'm posting I also spotted a Fast Diet webchat with Dr M on Gransnet at http://www.gransnet.com/webchats/fast-d ... ael-mosley

[carorees]

Ooooh, get her! Handbags at dawn!

Fascinating, Phi! Thanks for that.

Interesting that Zoe's final paragraph completely ignores the whole of the Intermittent Fasting movement:

"Or you could just eat real food (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruits in season and whole grains in moderation); three times a day and get on with your life. But then that would be The Harcombe Diet!"

I wonder when this forum will move from simply being a collection of anecdotal evidence, to being a serious study of IF? Which it is, IMO!

(Not to mention the 19 threads on the subject on Mumsnet since the Horizon programme appeared last August.)

Interestingly, its been 6 months since I lost 10kg between February and November last year. According to Zoe, I should start expecting the weight to pile back on again!

What she completely discounts, being distracted by her critique of Harvie et al, is that once you get to grips with IF - mainly, but not exclusively in the form of 5:2 - unlike any other diet, you know exactly what you have to do to control your weight.

And bear in mind Michael Pollan's dictum:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Now to check out the Dr M webchat!

Cheers, B&W

I posted a reply to Ms Harcombe

I too can recommend the 5:2 diet for weight loss. I started on 17th September 2012 and have been following up until now. I am not gaining weight. It is gloriously simple.

Eat 500 (woman) or 600 (man) calories on 2 days a week and eat what you want on other days.

Thanks Zoe for your special report. It helped me a great deal and I was able to enter into the diet with eyes open. I recommend it.

You can see my pictures at blog/dohpeterchina/

Best of luck whichever route you take,
Peter

I wonder if they will keep it?

[carorees]

I agree with several points that Zoe makes: First that the two day diet being very complex. And second that the weightloss is not impressive. I am frankly not surprised that the weightloss is not as good as with 5:2 because just going low carb on two days is not going to result in much of a calorie restriction and even in the trial the energy consumed on the diet days was higher than is allowed on 5:2.

Most of the rest is largely being picky!

In Harvie's 2013 paper...

Changes in weight, adiposity and body circumferences

The proportions of the three groups achieving 5 % or greater weight loss at 3 months were 65 % (IECR), 58 % (IECR+PF) and 40 % (DER) (χ2= 5·2, P= 0·076). Both IECR groups experienced significantly greater and comparable reductions in body fat than the DER group (IECR P= 0·007 and IECR+PF P= 0·019), but no significantly greater reductions in weight, waist, hip and bust circumferences (Table 3). There were small reductions in FFM in all the three groups. The median percentage of weight lost, which was FFM, was less in the IECR+PF group (20·4 (95 % CI 13·2, 27·2) %) compared with both IECR (36·0 (95 % CI 26·4, 41·3) %, P= 0·009) and DER (29·3 (95 % CI 25, 38·1) %, P= 0·048) groups.

Mean weight loss for the IECR group (600-650 cals, 2 consec days) was 5 kg in 3 months or 0.9 lbs/week.

Appreciated reading all of this post

Thanks Phil for the link, it's quite refreshing to see some fur flying, everyone is usually so darned polite!

If Ms Harcombe had read around here she would have known that the original 'milk diet' paper by Harvie was not the one from which the 'Two Day Diet' was derived, which would have saved her quite a lot of red ink - and cheeks!

I think she still hasn't grasped that it is the IECR+PF diet (aka 'ICR diet' of the original slide presentation [why change the acronym for heaven's sake!]) that is now the the 'Two Day Diet'. As I read it (from the slide, I don't have access to the now-published paper, nor do I have the book), this allowed subjects to eat as much protein and fat as they wanted and only restricted carbohydrates on the two days - hence the proposition that this is not a calorie-count diet. (Of course subjects do in practice restrict their overall calorie intake, but they do so by choice.)

I had never heard of Zoe Harcombe before now, but on her website is a paper about IF written in the immediate wake of the original Horizon programme. She makes some pretty fair points which amount to saying that the long-term health benefits of IF apart from weight loss are all unproven. Dr M never claimed they were.

So, I think Ms Harcombe scores a few hits, but underlying all of this is her need to defend her own published commercial dietary programme against the (implicit) charge that it has been overtaken by the new wave of intermittent fasting.

... the two day diet being very complex

Yes indeed!

I wonder if they will keep it?

Good strategy Peter - praise her while contradicting her But it doesn't seem to have worked, I can't see your post there...

I wonder when this forum will move from simply being a collection of anecdotal evidence, to being a serious study of IF?

Yes this is what we ought to try to achieve. But how to do it? Our data is impressive but anecdotal by its very nature.

I wonder if they will keep it?

Good strategy Peter - praise her while contradicting her But it doesn't seem to have worked, I can't see your post there...

The comment has been moderated and is up and running