The 5:2 Diet

[TheClockworkDodo]

Has anyone tried the 5:2 diet, or anything similar involving regular fasting or calorie restriction, not so much for weight loss as for improved general health?

We have been wondering whether this would be a good thing for R, as, while his BMI is OK, it's only just OK, and he's gradually acquiring a paunch. He has a family history of stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, and ME, so anything which would prevent his developing any of these would be a good idea (and the original point of the 5:2 diet, for anyone who missed the programme about it, is not that it reduces weight but that it reduces body fat and so reduces the risk of a number of major diseases).

However, R is hypoglycaemic, so low blood sugar is dangerous for him, as it would be for someone insulin-dependant. Fasting altogether would be difficult if not impossible for him, and we're not sure how he'd cope with calorie restriction. I'd be happy to do it with him, to support him, if we can find some way of making it work for people who are likely to hypo at any given moment (and make sure I don't lose weight with it, because I can't afford to!).

Has anyone tried it, especially anyone who's on insulin? How did you get on with it?

(Posting this here rather than on weight loss board because I'm thinking in terms of healthy diet generally rather than losing weight).

 

[Northerner]

Giving this a *bump* 🙂 The fasting days aren't complete fasts, are they, you do eat something?

 

[Robin]

My husband and I have done this. I always put on weight in the autumn, and then need to lose a few pounds after the winter. Husband is only about half a stone overweight, but had a health scare last autumn, so was motivated to try. We don't do it strictly, you're supposed only to have 500 calories on the starve days, we aim for 800, then relax it a bit as we reach our targets, until perhaps for the two days a week we just don't eat snacks like chocolate or nuts, (or biscuits and cake in his case.) I tend to cook something like a chicken stir fry with lots of veg, or a veg filled omelette on 'starve' days, and soup for lunch, so it's the carb we tend to get rid of. If we find we've put on weight again, after a holiday or something, or if the weathers been too foul to walk or garden, we get stricter again. It's always Mondays and Thursdays for us.

 

[Mark Parrott]

Ive got a couple of books with recipes for the fasting days. Very nice they are too.

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Thanks for the bump, Alan, and for your replies, Robin and Mark 🙂

No, Alan, as Robin says, the fasting days are really just restricting calories a lot - I think women are supposed to aim for 500 and men for 600. It's based on a Horizon programme done by Dr Michael Mosely - he found a lot of scientists who are researching calorie restriction/fasting as a way of reducing risk of heart disease, various cancers, alzheimers, and of course diabetes. The calorie restriction seemed to work just as well as fasting altogether, and obviously much safer if you're on insulin.

Robin, do you find you hypo a lot when you do the fast days? Do you not have any bolus insulin at all? I can't remember, are you on a pump, or are you injecting? I hypo so much anyway, and R gets hypo symptoms if he doesn't eat for more than a few hours, so that's the aspect of it which concerns me. I'm on basal-bolus injections, Lantus and Novorapid.

Mark, if you've done the diet rather than just using some of the recipes, did you find it helpful in terms of feeling healthier?

Recipes are unlikely to be useful to us, unfortunately, because I have so many food intolerances, in a book of (say) 100 recipes I'm unlikely to find more than 1 I can eat, if that. So for us it would have to be just cutting out carbs (and in R's case, the huge amounts of cheese he gets through!) and aiming for 600ish calories with the rest of what we eat.

 

[Robin]

Robin, do you find you hypo a lot when you do the fast days? Do you not have any bolus insulin at all? I can't remember, are you on a pump, or are you injecting

I'm on MDI, Juliet. I don't seem to hypo, I tend to calculate my Bolus a bit intuitively, rather than strictly scientifically! If I'm low carbing, I give myself a bit, maybe 2 units, because I know the protein will convert to glucose eventually. I think what I tend to do is not give myself the Bolus as early as I would if I was having a meal containing more carbs. (That's when I find the Libre useful, because if I look like I'm going low, I'll just have a couple of fruit pastilles if I need to later on.)

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Thanks, Robin - I tend to do the same myself, guesstimate calculations rather than detailed ones, as my diet is so limited anyway it doesn't change much. I'm not sure I'd need any bolus for protein because I suspect the Lantus would cover it (I have one unit Novorapid for about 20g carbs). I suspect I might have to lower the Lantus too, to avoid hypo-ing during the day. I normally hypo about once a day on average - am supposed to be aiming for no more than 3 a week, but I seem to have a choice of readings around 3 or readings around 10, nothing in between.

I have been thinking about getting a Libre, so might be an idea to try that before I try to cut carbs too much! They do sound helpful. I just thought if I did the 5:2 diet with R it would help him to persevere with it.

 

[Mark Parrott]

Mark, if you've done the diet rather than just using some of the recipes, did you find it helpful in terms of feeling healthier?

No, I haven't done the full diet yet, but plan to if I can't shift anymore weight. My weight loss has slowed right down now, but still need to shift a few more pounds.🙂

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Thanks for getting back to me, Mark 🙂 If you do do it, please let me know - I'd be interested to know if it works for you.

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

OK, so I found a body fat calculator - http://www.bmi-calculator.net/body-fat-calculator/metric-body-fat-calculator.php - and discovered that, although R's BMI is just about within the healthy range, in terms of body fat he is obese 😱

And although my BMI is at the low end of healthy and my body fat is just over the line from fitness to acceptable, the fact that I'm apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped (ie I have no bum to speak of 🙄) means my waist-to-hip ratio is rather higher than it should be.

So we are having a calorie-restricted day. I don't think it's feasible for us to do 2 days a week, with R's hypoglycaemia and my frequent hypos, so we're going to try just doing Fridays and see what happens.

I will test a bit more often than usual and obviously treat any hypos properly if I have to. R will have a dried apricot for low-calorie fast-acting sugar if he starts to feel faint. I'll let you know how we get on ... 😱

 

[Martin Canty]

I don't do 5:2 but I regularly do 16:8 (hours not days 😱) which fits in with how I have pretty much eaten my whole adult life, sometimes I fast for a whole day. I also only eat when hungry (except for the evening meal when I have to cook for my dear Wife). I find this, & LCHF works well for me, weight down to 170-175lb BG in pretty good control, BMI 23.5....

I don't calorie restrict, I carb restrict to anywhere between 10-40 a day

Personally I do great on this & prefer this regime, I am probably in the best shape of my life since my early 20's (apart form a few aches & pains associated with normal aging)

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Thanks Martin, that's interesting. I wouldn't be able to cut carbs very much because I have such a limited diet already due to a huge range of food intolerances - there just wouldn't be much left I could eat (I can't tolerate much in the way of fat). I also have a very fast metabolism - my BMI is about 20.5 and I think I eat more than R does (his BMI is 24.5, but his body fat is about 27%).

I used to fast for 24 hours sometimes before I was diabetic, but with both of us suffering from frequent hypos, I don't think either R or I would be able to go for 16 hours without eating now - in fact I think we'd have trouble going for 8 hours without eating! We are splitting our 600 calories today between breakfast and dinner, with a more or less carb-free cal-free lunch - thought that was safer from the hypo point of view.

Readings so far today - 5.3 before breakfast, a worrying 9.1 three hours later and 5.7 an hour after that (having done a small amount of gardening), before lunch.

 

[Martin Canty]

Unfortunately, Juliet, I only know T1's through the forum so am learning about their experiences 2nd hand..... Food intolerances are such a pain, my only problem with foods are beets, I'd rather walk naked through stinging nettles than eat beets.....

 

[Matt Cycle]

OK, so I found a body fat calculator - http://www.bmi-calculator.net/body-fat-calculator/metric-body-fat-calculator.php - and discovered that, although R's BMI is just about within the healthy range, in terms of body fat he is obese 😱

And although my BMI is at the low end of healthy and my body fat is just over the line from fitness to acceptable, the fact that I'm apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped (ie I have no bum to speak of 🙄) means my waist-to-hip ratio is rather higher than it should be.

So we are having a calorie-restricted day. I don't think it's feasible for us to do 2 days a week, with R's hypoglycaemia and my frequent hypos, so we're going to try just doing Fridays and see what happens.

I will test a bit more often than usual and obviously treat any hypos properly if I have to. R will have a dried apricot for low-calorie fast-acting sugar if he starts to feel faint. I'll let you know how we get on ... 😱

According to that calculator my body fat percentage is just under 12% - apparently I'm an athlete. 😉

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

It's all that cycling

R used to cycle every morning before we moved here, just for half an hour round the local area before starting work (he worked from home). Now he has an hour's commute to his new job, so no time for cycling. He does do other exercise, but he has been steadily getting fatter

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Readings so far today - 5.3 before breakfast, a worrying 9.1 three hours later and 5.7 an hour after that (having done a small amount of gardening), before lunch.

I was 5.7 again mid-afternoon, so that was fine, but then 4.1 before dinner, so thought I'd better have a dried apricot before my carb-less meal. 3 hours later I was 8.7 One dried apricot does not normally take me up that much - I'd expected to be back to 5.7! So apparently there are carbs in salmon, brocoli, and cauliflower ... (yes, I know, probably my body converting them, but still, I wasn't expecting that much of a rise 😱).

I couldn't have injected more than half a unit for the meal though, or I'd have been well below 4, and I can live with being 8.7 for a bit so long as it goes down again - so the plus side of fasting = only two injections a day!

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Just an update - unfortunately my body had what I suspect was probably a delayed reaction to the fast My BGL had gone up to 9.6 at bedtime so I had half a unit of novorapid with my 10g carbs (last 60 calories of the day, making a total of 590 cals altogether). But then R had trouble waking me up in his morning/my night (he leaves for work at 7 and I often don't get up until 10 so he says goodbye when he gets up). Didn't occur to him I might be seriously hypo, he thought I was just tired 😱 but thankfully I woke up again and tested at 7.30, when I was 2.4 - presumably I had been lower earlier 😱. So I dealt with that and got BG up to sensible level, then when I got up and tested at 10.30 I was back down to 3.6, so a double whammy. I was absolutely shattered all day and my BGL was in the 8s & 9s.

So I don't think I will be trying quite such a low calorie day again, or trying an evening meal without any carbs. I will try another low cal day in a couple of weeks, just to make sure it really was the fasting which caused the problems, but I'll be a lot more cautious with it, and aim for 1000 calories rather than 600, with some carbs in my evening meal.

The good news is that R found it a lot easier than he expected (he managed 665 calories), and didn't have any hypo episodes at all, so he is willing to try again next week! 🙂

 

[bilbie]

you may be better doing a basal test first, to make sure that's right?
https://mysugr.com/basal-rate-testing/

some T1's are finding the LCHF diet helps, somewhere between 20-130g carbs/day. As well as getting off the BG roller-coaster and weight loss, it reduces bolus insulin

But here is some info on fasting and how it works
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk

 

[KookyCat]

I just tried the body fat calculator and came out mid fitness range. Wasn't expecting that since these measures rarely work for a 6ft tall woman. The BMI thing is a farce for tall women, it had me at a healthy weight when I had dangerously low body fat, so this one seems marginally more useful. I tried the 5:2 before I was diagnosed because it was reported to help people with POTS, it didn't do anything at all for that but I did loose about 6kg and got shouted at because I couldnt really spare any at that point!

Personally I'm not a fan of ultra low carb in the long term, but then I've got some complex issues with muscle retention and metabolism due to the other love of my life (EDS) so I'm hardly a good test case 😉

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Thanks, Bilbie - yes, I had already thought it would be a good idea for me to do some basal testing. But at the moment I hypo with 7 units Lantus and I have high readings with 6 units and this changes as frequently as the weather does so it would be good to have some settled weather before I do it ... 🙄

I've also got various alternatives to my current basal lined up - half unit Lantus pen, trying Lantus in the morning instead of evening, trying Tresiba instead of Lantus - and I will at some point be borrowing a CGM to see exactly what my blood sugar normally does during the night (the problem being that I suspect there is no "normally").

Unfortunately I can't eat high fat as I can't tolerate much in the way of fat at all. I have to eat carbs if I want to maintain my weight, which I do - I only want to lose a bit of body fat, and not very much of that. I was really doing this to try to encourage R to do it, but if he will continue without me I don't need to keep on with it.

Kooky - the metabolism thing sounds familiar - I suspect it is my peculiar metabolism which means I can't eat a low carb diet too. If R manages to lose 6kg with the 5:2 we will be pleased though, so long as it is the fat around his middle which he loses!