LOW CARB 5:2 – DOES IT WORK?

This week I again followed a low carb diet on two consecutive days – I did Monday and Tuesday.

This proved easy peasy on Monday but I found I suffered from dreadful cravings for anything sweet on Tuesday. I wasn’t hungry, just desperate for chocolate! Next week I will definitely not attempt to do the low carb days consecutively.

For anyone interested, I am not following an “Atkins” style, totally carb-free diet but I am restricting my carbs (on 2 days a week) to less than 40g. In practice this means that I need to avoid starchy carbs like bread, rice and pasta and also sweet things. I can however have a much more varied diet than strict carb-free. Low carbohydrate foodstuffs in small quantities such as milk, tomatoes etc can easily be incorporated. Very low carb diets such as Atkins always get a bad press and probably for good reason – you are depriving your body of essential nutrients over a long period of time.

Low Carb 5:2 is NOT like Atkins. Firstly we are only restricting carbs for 2 days and we can eat a broad range of foods on the other 5 days. Secondly we are not aiming for the Atkins holy grail of “ketosis” which is when the body is forced to use different stores of energy such as glycogen from the liver – a lot of this weight-loss turns out to be just water! Instead we are using the easy rules of low carb to make our diet days even easier.

Biggest advantages over low cal 5:2

• no calorie counting

• less hunger pangs

My results so far

It has been a good diet week: I have lost 2 pounds over the 2 diet days, achieving my target weight-loss for the week. Last week I only lost a pound which was very disappointing. I ended up doing a third low carb day on Thursday and then I did manage to lose the extra pound. This week, I have been more sensible with my fat and cheese intake. I have also been more careful to only eat when I am hungry – sticking to three meals with no extra snacks.

Top tips

1. Don’t take low carb to mean “Eat as much cheese as you possibly can!”
2. Do as much exercise as possible – on both low carb and normal days. It will make you feel good and help stop the cravings.
3. Less likely to want to binge the day after a diet day so am finding it easier to eat healthily on normal days.

Low carb 5:2 is working for me. It’s definitely easier than normal 5:2 and I am losing weight – Result!!

source;http://www.52recipes.co.uk/2013/11/14/low-carb-52-does-it-work/