‘The Fast Diet looks like a wonderful way of optimising our wellbeing, our longevity, and a great way to lose weight too. As you say, it is so much more than “just a diet”, it is really a whole lifestyle, and importantly, one that can be followed with relative ease. I have several patients who have started to successfully follow the diet and think it is wonderful. I have also incorporated it into my own lifestyle, as have two other GP colleagues and several members of staff. Huge congratulations on a life-changing broadcast.’

Dr Pete Bridgwood

‘I watched your Horizon programme Eat, Fast, Live Longer with some interest and my family and I decided to try the diet that you suggested. I am a GP in my 50s working in north London. My BMI was 29, but I am otherwise healthy, though I do very little exercise. I was somewhat sceptical initially but have managed to lose 6kg in six weeks and find the diet very simple and easy to follow. I can see no reason why I would not continue in this way for many years.

I have presented a summary of your programme to a few colleagues and have started to recommend it to some of my patients with startling results.

One particular patient, who obviously has metabolic syndrome and a family history of type 2 diabetes, had a fasting glucose of 7.2. After only a few weeks, his fasting glucose dropped to 5.9 and he lost 5kg in weight.

I would like to spread the word even further and wondered if you had plans to design a simple leaflet or website that I could either give to my patients or direct them to view on the Internet. I have difficulty explaining the diet in the short time at the end of one of my ten-minute consultations. I think that this type of manageable eating plan is likely to be so much more successful in managing the obesity epidemic than the current plans to “traffic light” and give fat and sugar contents on food packaging. I think it would be so much more useful to emphasise the calorie content of foods.’

Dr Jon Brewerton

‘I have been on IF now for the last 14 weeks. I have lost 9.4lb and 9.5 inches. On previous diets I have never got below 140lb (ten stone).

  Start weight 145.6lb    
  Current weight 136.4lb  
  Height 5’6”  
  Inch loss:    
  Bust 1.25”  
  Midriff 0.5”  
  Waist 1.75”  
  Abdomen 2.5”  
  Hips 2.5” Thighs 0.5”  
  from each leg    

Improvements other than weight loss: eyes look brighter and clearer. More energy. Sleeping better. Clearer head and better mental clarity (although not tested, I feel that I can remember things more easily). Feel healthy.’

Sarah H

‘A busy mum with three children, I was finding losing weight after having my youngest child really difficult. It didn’t help being constantly surrounded by food and snacks, preparing three, sometimes four, meals a day for the family. I enjoy food and socialising, so restrictive diets just felt like a chore and a battle of will-power every day, so it was never long before I was back to square one.

The Fast Diet, for me, is a more manageable way to lose weight both physically and emotionally, as it’s only two days a week of “being good” and sticking to 500 calories. It also fits beautifully around my social life, as the fast days can be flexible, so I make sure it’s a feast day when I’m out for drinks or meals.

It’s also not actually that hard to resist temptation for one day, as I know that the next day I can have a donut or a curry and a few glasses of wine if I really want; and when I do, I enjoy it even more without feeling guilty.

The proof is, literally, in the pudding; I have been eating and enjoying them on feast days, but sticking to 500 calories on fast days, and I am still losing weight. This works.’

Clare Wilson

‘Yesterday I ate really well as, although I can eat what I like, I’m also thinking that I don’t want to undo all my hard work. So I did have a bag of crisps, and I did have pork and apple sausages in cider for tea with one of my daughter’s homemade lemon pies afterwards, but I didn’t have the ton of crap I normally have in between.

I don’t think I find the fast days too hard because of the relatively short tunnel and there being light at the end of it. Looking forward to a weekend of eating normally though!

I think part of what this plan is getting at is that we need to learn it’s OK to feel hungry, and in fact it is an essential part of being slim. I speak as a lifelong overeater – the FULL feeling is so normal for me and I had some weird fear about feeling hungry.

Well, guess what? It’s not the end of the world. I live in a city with stores everywhere – I can have food at any moment I want, so hunger isn’t a sign I’m about to perish or get weak.

During the last couple of months, I’ve been learning to embrace feeling hungry and being comfortable with that – it’s a sign from my body to eat again soon (and hopefully that it is burning fat now), not a sign to be feared.

It’s OK to feel hungry. Immediate death from starvation will not occur.’

Unhappyhildebrand on Mumsnet.com

‘Everyone is doing so well. You can really do anything for a day, and with a bit of planning I managed to plug most of my hunger pangs down to a manageable level. Scales were showing a good loss this morning.

Any concerns I had on my exercise performance while fasting were scuppered this morning. I ran my fastest sustained pace ever and that was following a 500-calorie fast day with no breakfast, only a coffee – I smell fat burning!!!! I feel great and will break the fast properly with lunch today. Next fast day is on Thursday. Good luck to everyone fasting today.’

SpringGoddess on Mumsnet.com

‘Just wanted to add that exercising whilst fasting was fine for me, too. I spent an hour at the gym last night and felt good. Did 35 minutes on the cross trainer and some weights and didn’t feel faint or dizzy. It’s amazing how good I feel when fasting actually.’

dontcallmehon on Mumsnet.com

‘I did Day One yesterday and am feeling brilliant this morning and full of energy. In the end, I just decided to go as long as I could without food. I drank tea with milk and black coffee and water throughout the day. I had some melon and strawberries at 4pm, then a full dinner of two Quorn sausages, one boiled egg, one slice of toast, rocket salad with a bit of balsamic. It tasted so good! But, the fasting was easier than expected. Wasn’t too hungry and just tried to keep busy during the day.’

Mondayschild78 on Mumsnet.com

‘My Day One yesterday also went brilliantly! I wasn’t even ravenous when I woke up this morning, I was able to wait an hour before having some Burgen bread toast and peanut butter – and I struggled to finish it! I loved the feeling of emptiness in my tummy, and the hunger pangs were also enjoyable at times – is this weird? My whole life I had eaten when I wasn’t hungry because I was so scared of having a single tummy rumble. I am weirdly looking forward to my next fast day…’

ILoveStripeySocks on Mumsnet.com

‘For me, fasting - 600 calories twice a week - has changed my attitude to food and drink. It has broken a cycle of over indulgence which caused my weight to rise steadily for 30 years. We are creatures of habit, and without realizing it slip into patterns of behavior which are difficult to change. But now something profound has happened: I perceive things more clearly and there is something about this new state of mind which reminds me of how I felt in my 20s when I had a BMI of around 22. I no longer feel comfortable if I have eaten too much, and I feel more in control. The habit is being broken. I suspect I will be on this diet more or less for the rest of my life.

David Cleevely

‘I am now two weeks into my 5:2 diet and I am already seeing a positive effect on my weight. At my second weigh-in, I had lost a total of five pounds. Feel noticeably slimmer and happy that I can maintain this for a long time to come.

  Stats 5’ 10” male      
  Start weight 13st 9lb  
  Week 1 13st 6lb  
  Week 2 13st 4lb  

Really enjoyed the programme!’

Nick Wilson

‘OK, fast two of week 13 was completed yesterday and as promised, here’s an update for a whole quarter of Intermittent Fasting.

The programme involves eating only 600 calories on two selected, non-consecutive days of the week. Apart from the two days a week, that’s it. The rest of the time, I eat and drink what I want. You don’t need to exercise or count calories on a daily basis, you don’t feel hungry 24/7 and, best of all, you don’t die of starvation.

Tonight is Indian night, tomorrow is steak night and Sunday is probably Italian. Every night is booze night. That doesn’t sound like too onerous a regime to me. It’s fair to say that my overall weekly calorie consumption (excluding fast days) has reduced, not because I’m avoiding eating on the feed days, but purely because I’m just not as hungry.

Over the past 13 weeks, I’ve been developing the regime to suit myself and have got into a fairly settled Monday and Thursday routine. I consume nothing at all during the day apart from three or four teas/coffees (just marginally whitened) and about one to one and a half litres of tap water. I come home and I do a ten-mile thrash on a cycle turbo trainer. Last night, I did it in 30 minutes and 25 seconds, an average of 20mph for 30 minutes. Using that assumption, my ten-miler burns around 550 calories. By doing it before you eat on a fast day, the theory (I guess) is that you’re forcing your body to burn body fat, rather than the carbs it would normally turn to for a short burst of energy.

Hunger wise – well, it’s OK. I eat late prior to a fast day and that definitely helps. I find having even a small breakfast actually triggers hunger for the rest of the day, so I avoid everything until late on, when I have some flavoured rice (240 cals) and the rest as vegetables. It’s easily managed – you actually don’t get hungrier throughout the day and it’s easy to take your mind off it by doing something. You DO have to approach a fast day in the right mindset though. If you don’t, you’ll have a pretty hellish time. Do it right and it’s really quite a doddle.

So when I started the regime in mid-August, I was a fraction of a pound off 14 stone and on the last notch of my belt (I know that’s not very scientific and I wish I’d taken more measurements when I started, but hey-ho).

This morning, I tipped the scales at 12st 9lbs and the fourth notch on my belt is quite comfortable (the third is a wee bit loose). One notch = just over one inch. The goal without exercise would be to lose a pound a week (given that a 4000 weekly calorie restriction = roughly 1 pound of body fat). With the one hour of exercise a week, I accelerated it by almost 50% to 19lbs in the same period.

I’m keeping going until Christmas where I hope to go to a 5:1+1 (the +1 being an 800 or 900 calorie day). If that works, then I’ll stay on that for the rest of my time.

I went for a cycle last Sunday after having a full breakfast and it was incredibly easy. Loads of speed, the hills were actually fun and, apart from the chilliness, it was extremely enjoyable. The benefit of being fitter and having a fuelled-up body I guess. LOADS of energy.

Other benefits:

I have suffered from asthma since I was a child. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was when I was a bairn, but now it’s practically disappeared. My “peak flow” reading has gone up by over 30 per cent in the 13 weeks – probably as a result of the weight loss allowing me to exercise harder.

A wee bit girly here, but I’d say my skin complexion has improved dramatically. No plooks or blackheads – even the touch of dry skin on my elbows has gone.’

David Norvell

‘Both my partner and I watched your programme and thought it was very interesting, so we decided to start 5:2 fasting on the following Monday. (Always good to start news things on a Monday, I find!) I have done liquid fasting in the past, for weeks, and really liked it. But then I put the weight back on again, I found. This seems to work better.

  Height 1.60m     
  Weight 83kg  

I’m not very FAT as such, but I do need to lose weight, especially around my tummy/waist – the exact place where it’s not good for you to be fat… I know! My aim is to get to 65–70kg, but at my age, it’s not as easy to lose weight as it used to be when I was younger (according to my GP).

  6 Aug 83kg (started fasting)  
  8 Aug 82kg  
  9 Aug 81kg  
  14 Aug 81kg  
  18 Aug 80kg  
  23 Aug 80kg  
  27 Aug 79.5kg  
  6 Sept 79.5kg  
  13 Sept 78.5kg  
  21 Sept 79kg  

We both love the Intermittent Fasting. As you can see, I have lost some weight and the only reason it has not gone quicker is the fact I have not done as much exercise as I set out to do originally. We will certainly continue and I will keep weighing myself to check the progress.

We also find it makes us want to eat less the adjacent days, too. We do our two days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Come Thursday morning, I feel so “light” and full of energy, I don’t want to “spoil” it by eating too much even if it’s my feeding day.

We have our main “fasting meal” in the evening, as it’s the time we see each other at home after work, to settle down and talk over dinner. It’s probably not ideal from a calorie-burning aspect, but it’s more practical for us and suits us best.

A typical fasting day main meal:

During the day, we eat a banana and an apple.

I’m really grateful for you making this programme and have passed it on to friends and family who have taken it on, too.’

Britt Warg

‘I’m a neurophysiology and pharmacology student, researching Parkinson’s. Inspired by the Horizon programme, I decided to “self-experiment”. This has now blossomed into a project that will be run at my university. I’m interested in data, neurodegenerative disorders and what steps I can take in my own lifestyle that will decrease my occurrence of breast cancer. I am a two-time (and counting) breast cancer patient, so I’m rather interested in what impact (if any) Intermittent Fasting could have on recurrence.

From my blog, www.schrokit.wordpress.com:

‘I’ve been doing the Intermittent Fasting diet for about three months now and wrote a blog post about it.

As you see, my experiences have been positive. What I didn’t mention on my blog is that my husband has high cholesterol, which is an inherited condition, and the main reason we went on this diet. He didn’t need to lose more than a couple of kilos in weight (he’s always been a racing snake), so now he makes sure he increases his calorie intake (healthily with homemade smoothies) during the five days.’

From my blog, www.helenahalme.blogspot.co.uk:

‘We’ve been fasting since the beginning of September and it has worked for me in terms of weight loss and generally feeling healthier. I was 58.8kg and I’m now 50.9kg (note I’m 1.56m tall!). My partner has gone from 95kg to hovering around 87kg.

We find it is easy to stick to, with a bit of planning. Even during the Christmas season, I’m finding it much easier to manage than other eating plans. It seems like something we could stick to in the long term, even if we go down to once a week on some weeks. For now, twice a week works fine.

We end up splitting our calories into three meals. I’m vegetarian so we usually stick to soups and salads. In winter it is basically three meals of soup, or a banana or an egg for breakfast plus two soup meals. During warmer months, we had salad for lunch to mix it up.

I’ve converted quite a few people already. We all agree that we go to bed a little bit earlier and certainly looking forward to breakfast more than usual. Sometimes I vow to have the biggest, unhealthiest breakfast the next morning but always just end up having toast or cereal.

The main limitation I have found is exercise. I used to exercise most days and now I need to plan exercising around the fast days. I do Pilates or weights on fasting days, and stick to cardio on other days.’

Luella Charles

‘I watched Eat, Fast, Live Longer on BBC iPlayer in early August. It made good sense to me and I persuaded my husband to watch it too. Since then we have been following the fasting schedule (with 500 calories for me and 600 for him) most weeks, but not every week as sometimes we are only able to fit in a fast a week.

Our main motivation is for health benefits as we age (we are in our mid-50s). Both sets of our parents are still alive – mine are 80, and his are 92 and 86 – so genetically we “could” live fairly long lives. We want those lives to be as healthy as possible.

So far, we have both lost weight (16lb for me and 12lb for him) and find the fast days fairly easy. And we have both found that we do not overeat on the other days. In fact, I bought a four-finger Kit-Kat for the first time in months yesterday, ate only one finger and put the rest in my bag for later – absolutely unheard of for me as I have struggled with a very “healthy” appetite and have had an unhealthy BMI measurement for most of my life.

We have not had our IGF-1 measured, but we are both on high blood pressure medication, and my husband is on high-cholesterol medication. We are hopeful that we will see an improvement in these conditions when we next visit our GPs.

I actually find this way of eating much easier than any “diet” I have tried before. I can move the fast days around to cope with our social life.

As an update, I have now lost 20lb and am still finding the whole way of eating easy to do. On our fast days, we generally have a cooked breakfast (eggs or porridge) and then in the early evening a vegetable-heavy salad in the summer, or vegetable soup in the winter. My husband generally has a slice of bread as his extra 100 cals. We have maintained this way of eating since we saw the original programme and expect to continue (possibly with an interruption for Christmas).’

Maureen Johnston

‘Thank you, Michael, for bringing this leading-edge science to our attention… We now feel in control of our health and weight for the first time in many years, and I’m committed to continuing the programme for life.’

Brian M

‘Not shy about age size weight etc. I only really had a little to lose in comparision to some people so the health benefits are where I was most interest (I lost my Mum to breast cancer at 14 so the cancer avoiding benefits are something that appealed).

I am 38, but with every year that passed, I was getting heavier so weighing in at 10st 4lb on 01 Jan 2012 I pledged a plan of ‘eat less, move more’ – determined to lose some weight. A shoulder injury curtailed the ‘move more’ element, and my swimming and squash routine dried up but in August I watched the Horizon programme that changed my attitude forever. Dr Moseley, (in his unique human guinea pig style) introduced me to ADF and 5:2 lifestyles and with the support of facebook groups and personal research I have stuck to an alternate day diet ever since.

At 5ft 2ins I wanted to get to mid 8stone 6lbs by 2013. The hardest part about regular dieting was combining eating times and portions with my family. The option of fasting means I skip out breakfast and lunch and eat a normal portion of healthy food at dinner time. The first few weeks were hard; trying to keep hydrated was tricky; but the most curious thing was my initial reaction in the first few days. I consider myself to have a healthy attitude to food and so I was alarmed at the mild panic I experienced on my first week of fasting. ‘I cannot eat!’ Once I realised I wasn’t going to die and my energy levels didn’t crash I began to relax, enjoy and now even look forward to my fast days.

Some of my best gym sessions are on restricted days; and the absence of food really has helped clear my mind, and improve my focus. And as for weight-loss: I am sure I am single handedly keeping the UK retail economy going. I have bought the same little black dress in three different sizes, as the weight has dropped off, I have bought a whole new gym wardrobe, and am loving the positive comments I am getting.

I am now evangelising about this to all friends and colleagues at work; some who are very sceptical and usually start with the response “Oooo, I couldn’t last all day without food”. But trust me – really, you can, and when you do realise how simple it is – it gets easier and easier. My mantra to my friends is: “you only diet for a day”.

And the best bit: I really can eat all my favourite foods – pizza, curry, cheese, wine without gaining weight or feeling guilty. It’s a lifestyle for me now, which means I will never need to diet again.]

Tara McLaughlin

‘I’ve followed the 5:2 diet ever since watching Michael Mosley’s Horizon programme. Its radically changed my attitude to food/hunger. I feel more energetic, and losing nearly a stone has been a delightful plus. I’m not the sort of person to follow “reducing” diets. It was the science that interested me. I know an amazing number of other people who also wouldn’t “diet”, but who are Intermittent Fasting. I actually value the fasting days in a way I never thought I would, which makes them easy to stick to. I don’t intend to ever drop it.

Susie White

TWEETS

‘Thank you for changing my lifestyle. Converted a bunch of people to ADF/5:2 thanks to u, Horizon and @ feedfastfeast FB group’
@Stickypippa