Minimize Me: 10 Diets to Lose 25 Lbs in 50 Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

that
may be down to the fact that I went to bed a full two hours earlier than I
normally would. I tend to go to bed at around 11pm, but having eaten an
incredibly small evening meal, relatively early, I found that I was hungry and
tired by 9pm. I figured that the best remedy was just to go to bed, as what was
the point in staying up and feeling miserable? The end result was a longer,
deeper and far more rewarding night’s sleep. While the 5:2 diet clearly isn’t
going to do much for your social life, I can already see the benefits in other
areas.
     
    In principle it’s fairly
straightforward – you eat what you like for five days and fast for two. You
have five days of heaven in exchange for two days of hell. It means you’ll
spend 71.5% of your life happy and 28.5% of it miserable. Some would argue that
that’s a pretty good deal, and could even be sustainable long-term, but my
worry is the effect that the 28.5% has on others. You see, it’s not just 28.5%
of your life – it's 28.5% of everybody’s life who comes into contact with you.
In fact, for work colleagues, it’s likely to be as high as 40% as they don’t
get to see you at the weekend, and who in their right mind is going to choose a
Saturday or Sunday to fast? If the 5:2 diet did ever take off in a big way, I
would be worried about the long term effect on the economy as it’s likely that
productivity across the nation would immediately drop by between 23.5% and 40%
overnight.
     
    Louis had mentioned that
some of the possible side-effects would be difficulty sleeping at night, bad
breath, irritability and anxiety. I have to say that as of yet, I haven’t
experienced any of these. My wife might beg to differ on the bad breath bit,
but could it be any worse than on another day when I might be eating fish or
garlic?
     
    I’m aware that my
positivity today may just be the euphoria of no longer being in starvation mode
and that come Thursday I’ll once again be an irritable, anxious arsehole with
ridiculously bad breath. I always find it funny how short-sighted we can be.
When we’re suffering a hangover, with head in our hands we tell everyone who
cares to listen that we will never, ever, ever drink again. Cut to Pete’s party
on Saturday night when, with wine bottle in hand, we tell everyone who cares to
listen that we really, really love them.
     
    *
* *
     
    Day two and day three have
passed without incident as I would have expected. On the 5:2 diet, the
non-fasting days should be days where you forget about fasting and just get on
with enjoying food. I’ll be honest – I thought that following my first day of fasting
I would want to make up for things over the next couple of days, but I didn’t
really feel that I needed to. I actually ended up feeling energised and found
myself not wanting to undo the good work I had done. It felt counter-intuitive
to starve myself one day and gorge the next. Strangely, I found myself craving
things like nuts and fruits rather than fatty or sugary foods. Rather than
bacon sandwiches and doughnuts, I was surfing the aisles for things like Brazil
nuts and dates.
     
    With less to write about
in the last couple of days, I have found that I’ve had more time on my hands,
so I’ve been doing a little more research on the diet. To my horror, I
discovered that I had got the amount of calories that I can consume wrong! All
of the articles that I had researched made it clear that you should restrict
yourself to 500 calories on the days that you fast but I’ve since found out
that all of the articles that I had researched were aimed at women. The idea of
the 5:2 diet is that you restrict yourself to a quarter of your recommended
daily calorie intake, and for women this is reported to be around 2,000, but
for men it’s 2,500. It means that I could have had up to 625 calories on
Monday. By my maths, I reckon I could have got away with eating both the crusts
and the apple core! Lesson learned.
     
    Day four of the 5:2