Please wait, the site is loading...

Food

How to do the 5:2

by Sarah Alcock

Katrina Rendall asks people who cook and eat for a living how they've made the 5:2 diet work for them.

The story of 5:2

We've long been bombarded by too-good-to-be-true sounding fad diet claims. Truth is, two fifths of dieters quit within the first week and just one fifth manage a month on their new diet. So why is the 5:2 (or fast) diet different?

Medical journalist Dr Michael Mosely highlighted the health benefits of intermittent fasting in a BBC documentary in August 2012. His subsequent book, The Fast Diet, which he co-wrote with journalist Mimi Spencer, has sold over 340,000 copies and fans of the diet are said to include Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Beyoncé.

How does it work?

Limit your daily intake to 500 calories (for women; 600 for men) for just two days a week, then eat and drink as normal for the other five days. Experts say you'll lose around 1lb per week.

Karen Burns-Booth, 55, is a food writer and blogger at lavenderandlovage.com...

5-2karen.jpg

...She liked the idea of how easily the diet seemed to fit into her lifestyle, which involves a lot of cooking and eating out, and was also interested in the health benefits as she was suffering from insomnia and joint pain. Karen has lost 2 stone 2lb on the 5:2 diet since August 2012 and is still losing 1-1.5lb per week. She says it's by far the best diet she's ever tried.

Karen's top tips

· Hot food keeps me fuller when the weather is cold.
· I try to eat three meals a day and have my main meal in the evening, to prevent hunger pangs.
· I take a homemade lunch to work on my fast days, as most pre-prepared foods are too high in calories

Karen's fast day menu

· Breakfast: A small boiled egg
· Lunch: Curried carrot soup or roast tomato and garlic soup
· Dinner: Tiger prawn curry, made with 125g prawns per person, tinned tomatoes and low-fat yogurt, served with 60g of steamed rice.
· Snacks: A low-calorie jelly or a milky coffee in the evening as a hunger suppressant.

Elly Curshen, 33, is the owner of the Pear Café in Bristol...

5-2elly.jpg

...She's never dieted before but wanted to lost a few pounds and was tempted to try the 5:2 after seeing how successful friends had been. Elly lost 1 stone and 5lb on the 5:2 diet since April 2013. She said the hardest bit was getting through a hangover on a fast day.

Elly's top tips

· Use digital scales and weigh everything accurately, then use myfitnesspal.com to calculate calories.
· I save 400 calories for the evening and split them into one big meal plus snacks or two smaller meals.
· Social media is a great source of inspiration - I post pictures of my 5:2 dishes on instagram.com/ellypear and tag them #fastdayideas.

Elly's fast day food

· Breakfast: Plenty of water and a mug of builder's tea with carefully measured milk.
· Lunch: Salad with loads of ingredients in small amounts - lettuce, cucumber, carrot, red onion, pickled beetroot, alfalfa sprouts and a small pinch of my homemade coleslaw (made with yogurt).
· Dinner: Chargrilled vegetables with Puy lentils, capers, poached eggs and courgette 'spaghetti'.
· Snacks: I make crudités while dinner is cooking.

Find more great 5:2 tips and read the full feature in the February issue of Sainsbury's magazine, on sale now.

Don`t miss

We value your privacy

We use cookies to help give you the best experience on our site and to allow us and third parties to customise the marketing content you see across websites and social media. For more information see our cookie policy.

Cookie Preference Centre

Learn more about what each cookie category does and choose your settings (toggle right to opt in or left to opt out). Cookie policy


Strictly Necessary

These technologies are needed to enable our websites and apps to run and to keep it secure.

Sainsbury's Magazine

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
PHPSESSID Until the browsing session ends
device_view 1 month
viewedRecipes 1 year
subscription-{popup-version-date}-PopupClosed 12 days

Vimeo

Enables Vimeo videos on the site

Cookie name Duration
_derived_epik 1 year

Constant Commerce

Enables shopping tools for recipe ingredients

Cookie name Duration
cc_a_h 10 years
cc_a_s Until the browsing session ends

DoubleClick

DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) is an integrated ad-technology platform that enables us to more effectively create, manage and grow high-impact digital marketing campaigns.

Cookie name Duration
DSID 10 days
IDE 1 year
RUL 11 months

Performance/Analytics

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Google

Google Analytics tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
__gads 13 months
gadsTest Until the browsing session ends
_ga 28 months
_gat 1 minute
_gid 1 day
1P_JAR 1 month
ANID 10 days
CONSENT 18 years
NID 6 months
__Secure-3PAPISID 2 years
__Secure-3PSID 2 years
__Secure-3PSIDCC 1 year

Marketing/Targeting

These technologies help us decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you. We use this data to customise the marketing content you see on websites, apps and social media. They also help us understand the performance of our marketing activities. These cookies are set by us or our carefully-selected third parties.

Pinterest

Pinterest conversion tracking gathers conversion insights and builds audiences to target based on actions our visitors have taken on the site.

Cookie name Duration
_pinterest_ct_rt 1 year
_pinterest_ct_ua 1 year
_pin_unauth 1 year

Outbrain

These technologies tell us how customers use our sites and apps and provide information to help us improve the website, apps and your browsing experience.

Cookie name Duration
outbrain_cid_fetch 5 minutes
adrl 5 weeks
apnxs 6 weeks
criteo 2 months
obuid 6 months

Twitter

Twitter conversion tracking enables us to measure our return on ad spend by tracking the actions people take after viewing or engaging with our ads on Twitter.

Cookie name Duration
personalization_id 2 years
muc 2 years
ads_prefs 5 years
auth_token 5 years
dnt 5 years
guest_id 2 years
twid 5 years