Rooibos in my cup while I seriously consider the "
intermittent fasting" diet. We watched the BBC programme last night called
Horizon: Eat, Fast and Live Longer, and after investigating the various studies related to fasting and health benefits, the presenter, Michael Mosley, settled on the 5:2 fasting diet, which means eating normally for 5 days of the week, and fasting for 2 days. And by fasting, it means eating 500 calories on the fast day for a woman, or 600 for a man, so hardly starvation. This looks like something I could do quite easily, and would be less onerous than calorie counting all the time.
The results of this diet speak for themselves:
"I stuck to this diet for 5 weeks, during which time I lost nearly a stone and my blood markers, like IGF-1, glucose and cholesterol, improved. If I can sustain that, it will greatly reduce my risk of contracting age-related diseases like cancer and diabetes."
As he says on the programme, the benefits of fasting are unproven currently, but having seen footage of the 101 year-old Sikh man, who eats about half the calories of a normal male diet, run a marathon, I am beginning to get interested.