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You have probably heard of fasting diets. You may even have tried fasting at least once in your lifetime. This is NOT the same as a starvation diet. Starving yourself is extremely unhealthy and definitely not recommended. If you tried a fasting diet but didn’t manage to stick to it, at least you learned a bit about the process and could share your experience with friends and family. If you managed to stick to the diet for any length of time, you know how beneficial it can be to losing weight. It also has a lot of other health benefits too. So let’s take a look at these, before considering the different types of fasting diets.

Intermittent Fasting Is An Umbrella Term

Fasting for weight loss has become a popular solution for many people who are trying to improve their health, lose weight or heal other ailments. In essence, intermittent fasting is an umbrella phrase for many different meal timing plans which cycle between frequent fasting and restricted consumption over a defined period. During the intermittent fasting diet, many people reduce their calorie intake and increase their exercise and activity levels. Many experts believe that this increased exercise can have a positive impact on the heart.

Fasting for weight loss is not necessarily done only for people trying to lose a lot of weight. It is often recommended for those who need to shed a large amount of unwanted pounds (usually around 30 pounds or more) from a controlled, periodic eating plan. In addition to the benefits of losing weight, there are many other benefits of fasting diets that you should be aware of.

Health Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting

One of the biggest benefits of intermittent fasting is eating fewer calories. When you reduce your calorie intake, you will typically burn more fat. When you eat less food, your body has fewer calories to store up. Fasting diets may last only a few days, but they also can be a healthy long-term way of life.
Another benefit of fasting diets can be eating more quality fats and protein, especially if you combine a keto type diet with fasting. Many people are struggling with eating healthy fats. Because of your body’s lower need for these fat sources, eating more quality fats will help you drop weight. If you add quality proteins, like lean cuts of meat or fish, to your diet you will also increase your protein levels.
A third benefit of the fasting diet is improved digestion and increased energy. You will not be experiencing extreme hunger pangs throughout your diet. Instead of feeling bloated and hungry all the time, you will be full at the end of each day. This can lead to an improved quality of life because you will not have as many mood swings and irritable symptoms.

Finally, another benefit of the fasting diet is a lowered risk of developing heart disease. When you eat fewer calories, your body burns off extra fat and builds muscle. You may also begin to notice that symptoms of heart disease could subside. For example, if you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure or congestive heart failure, you might have experienced an increase in symptoms such as headaches and fatigue. By eating an alternate-day fasting diet, you can lower your risks of heart disease by up to 30 percent.

Although fasting diets have many benefits, they can be difficult to stick to but there are many different fasting diets and you should be able to find one that suits you.

Types of Fasting Diets

5:2

The 5:2 fasting diet was popularized a few years ago when a medical doctor, Michael Mosley, tried it and lost weight. He wrote a book called “The Fast Diet”. A friend of mine tried that diet at the time and has stuck to it ever since, working as a headteacher in elementary education and since retired and reaching 70, very healthy. On this form of intermittent fasting, you eat normally on 5 days of the week, while restricting yourself to 500 calories (women) 600 calories (men) on 2 days of the week. These days can be separated eg, Monday and Thursday, which seem to be popular choices or back to back on whichever 2 days you choose. People often choose Monday and Tuesday for that, leaving the weekend free to eat as they choose. If you reach your desired weight and do not want to lose any more, some people move to a 6:1 intermittent fasting regime, where they restrict calories on only one day of the week.

16:8

The 16:8 fasting diet is used every day. It allows you to eat only during a period of 8 hours and then you fast for the other 16 hours out of 24. Many people find that if they skip breakfast and do not eat anything until, say, 11 am, they then can eat normally between 11 am and 7 pm, which allows them lunch, a snack, and dinner and then they stop eating at 7pm until the following morning at 11 am.

OMAD

OMAD stands for one meal a day, so it is basically a 23:1 fasting diet, as you are allowed to eat one meal a day, which must be finished within one hour. It is sometimes done as part of the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, which allows one or two low carb complementary meals a day and one reward meal a day, which must be eaten within one hour. OMAD takes just the reward meal part of this diet.

How Fasting Diets Work

The theory behind many of these is that you cannot pack the same number of calories into your body during the hours you are allowed to eat on a fasting diet as you would if your diet were totally unrestricted. This was tested out with the 5:2 diet. People tended to eat about 10% more calories on the day after a fast but not sufficiently more to compensate for all the calories not eaten during the fast day. Provided you eat healthy nutritious food, protein, good fats and wholegrain products on the days when you are not fasting or on calorie restriction, you are unlikely to eat as much as you would if you ate what you wanted 7 days a week. Even if you want to eat high calorific foods like cake and candy, provided you eat the healthy food first, you will still eat less than before.

Serendipity

Do you believe in Serendipity? That’s a “lucky accident”, something unexpected that happens that is really beneficial. That happened to me a few weeks ago. I had a few minutes to wait for a train and I wandered over to the free books area of my local railway station.

In among donated Reader’s Digest, thrillers, travel and romances, I found a book whose title immediately caught my eye – “The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet“. So why did it immediately call to me? Because over 20 years ago, when I tried my most successful diet ever – the Atkins diet – that book included the term “carbohydrate addict”, with a description of what that might be and at that time, I reckoned that description might apply to me. Fast forward 20 years or more and I am now trying to find a diet I can stay on, that is, a diet on which I reach a reasonable weight and that I can stay on for the rest of my life. I thought I might try the Atkins diet again, although that doesn’t always suit our family meals, as my husband cannot eat the foods I need and vice versa. It is doable, with some juggling but then I found this book, for free, sitting waiting for me to take it home and read it!

Sick Of Yo Yo Dieting

I have reached a stage of my life where I do not want to keep losing weight with great difficulty only to start putting it back on again as soon as I stop the diet. Something happens and I want to lose weight, whether it’s a party, a holiday, a wedding invite or even a health scare, I find a diet and lose weight and then immediately I stop the diet, I put it all straight back on again.

Apart from the Atkins diet I have never yet found a diet that helps me lose weight that I keep off for life, without feeling half starved and ravenous most of the time. And even with that, it only takes one slip, to start putting weight back on or feeling ravenous. So when I found the book, I read it through quickly to see whether it would suit me and also fit into our family mealtimes without too much difficulty. The book was published in 1991, so I was quite surprised I had never heard of the diet previously but to mangle a Chinese proverb, “When the dieter is ready, the right diet will appear.” I was ready for a diet that I could live the rest of my life with. Was this the one?

Carbohydrate Addict

The book asks some questions to let you know whether or not you might be a carbohydrate addict. Some of these questions were on the lines of:

Do you gain weight easily, and if you lose any, do you gain it back?

I thought that was true of most people who diet, but maybe not?

Do you have a hard time stopping if you start to eat bread, pasta, or sweets?

Now, this was definitely me. I dare not eat a slice of bread or toast, one slice is never enough, even if it’s shortly before dinner. It just makes me feel hungrier and hungrier.

are you hungrier if you have some carbohydrates to eat before your lunch or dinner than you would be if you had had nothing at all, or maybe just a tea or coffee?

Yes, I have often found I can go all day if I have nothing at all to eat and that’s actually easier than having just something, if it is a carbohydrate item.

Would you rather have a plain meal that included a dessert than a gourmet meal with no dessert?

Again, that is definitely me. I would rather have soup and a dessert than a real gourmet meal.

There are a lot more questions and adding up the points you get for these answers tells you whether you could be a carbohydrate addict and whether it is mild, medium or severe.

Not Lack Of Will Power

Maybe you have found the same? People who do not need to diet think that it’s just lack of will power that you can’t stay at a reasonable weight. The comments I got from friends the other day, when I said I was on a diet (again) were on the lines of “Could you not just eat 2 meals a day?” or “When I was working, I just used to have an apple and a pear for lunch.” The carbohydrate addicts diet book says that carbohydrate addicts have a different body metabolism from others. It’s not their fault, it’s the way they were born! Now that makes me feel good.

I Can Have It Tonight

Another Point I liked from the book said that, I could have anything I wanted provided I waited til my “Reward Meal” and ate it within 60 minutes.

Manage Your Insulin

The book is really about finding a way to manage your insulin. Having read it through, I found that it said I could use the diet to manage cravings and that being on it and sticking to what it said would mean that I wouldn’t crave food all the time, even just after I had eaten. I was astounded – didn’t everyone have cravings to eat, even after a big meal, especially for dessert?

Got Started

I got the book on 17th January, read it right through and started on The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet on Saturday 18th January 2020. I had a few things I needed to alter in my eating.

I was using Golden Linseed to keep me “regular“. This was not mentioned in the book, nor on the list of “allowed” foods for the daily “complementary meals” (CMs). No problem, I just moved my linseed intake to dinner time, when I was allowed my “Reward Meal” (RM) at which I could eat anything I wanted provided it was all taken within 60 minutes of starting (no snacking).
Complementary Meals must be “normal” sized portions, with no carbohydrates. That was not a real problem, I was already eating an omelette for breakfast. I just needed to make it a 2-egg omelette instead of 3 eggs! I also made it a cheese omelette, with 1 ounce of grated hard cheese.
I generally kept hard boiled eggs in the fridge in case I got hungry during the day but no snacking was allowed, so I used those up in an allowed CM at lunchtime over a couple of days. I was worried that I would get really ravenous but no, right from the start, just as it said, the cravings disappeared. Those cravings for bread and butter and thick honey, right before dinner were gone! I was astounded. While I might feel hungry just before my evening meal, I now found that I was not ravenous, nor overwhelmingly desperate for something, anything to eat right before my dinner. I now began to understand why my friends could say “why not just eat 2 meals a day” or “I just have an apple of pear for my lunch”. A carbohydrate addict cannot do that and people whose bodies don’t work that way do not understand the cravings for carbohydrate that mean you just want more and more! They were gone!

Losing Weight

The diet suggested that a loss of between one half and one pound a week was best and that taking your AVERAGE weight over the week was important. I would have loved to lose more but losing anything and keeping it off would be a bonus, so I decided to stick with it. After all, if I had 26 pounds to lose, that would be 26 weeks, which is 6 months. It sounds like a long time but I didn’t have a particular event I was aiming for and I wanted to KEEP weight off. It seemed to me that taking up a diet I could STICK to long term would be of more value than losing weight quickly then putting it straight back on again, which had happened with the other diets, when I stopped them. The diet plan has several variations depending on whether you want to lose weight or stay the same and which variation of the plan you followed the previous week.

February Update

At February 21st, 5 weeks after starting the CAD diet, I have lost 2 Kilograms since I started, that is about 4 and a half pounds.

Not a huge amount but the recommended amount. I have not felt ravenous and I have felt satisfied by my complementary meals. I have really enjoyed my reward meals, yet I wasn’t desperate to eat them. I have been eating what might be considered two meals at one sitting for my reward meal. The first being the same meal as anyone else in the house, including fish fingers and chips, sausages and beans or a roast chicken dinner, though very often I do not eat potatoes or rice. Once that is over, I have eaten a large bowl of green soup, with golden linseed in it, then to follow, a bowl of plain yogurt, which I love, for dessert. By the time I have finished all that, I am extremely full. Sometimes, I have a spoonful of cream cheese or slices of hard cheese if I have any room!

I have not felt ravenous and I have lost weight. As the reward meal can contain any food I like (provided it is eaten within 60 minutes of starting), I feel I have a balanced diet, as I eat a great many vegetables, good amounts of protein and fat and get plenty of nourishing chicken broth, with yogurt and cheese. I could eat fruit if I wished but vegetables also have plenty of vitamin C.

It Fits With Family Meals

Many other diets require the whole family to go on them or for the dieter to eat separate or weighed out portions. This diet fits right in with whatever anyone else is eating for their main meal. With an omelette for breakfast and an evening meal of anything I want to look forward to every day, I do not feel deprived and the diet is managing my cravings, so I do not feel ravenous.

More Information

If you are interested in trying this diet, then you can get the book on The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet and there are plenty of recipes available too from a cook book for the diet.