The 5:2 Bikini Diet: Over 140 Delicious Recipes That Will Help You Lose Weight, Fast! Includes Weekly Exercise Plan and Calorie Counter

Peggy

‘Routine is key to the running of our household. I have breakfast at 7.15 a.m., a piece of fruit mid-afternoon and a light evening meal at around 7 p.m.’

Deek43

‘I drink lots of water and limit myself to one cup of tea and one black coffee during the day. I keep myself totally busy so I don’t think about food. I eat one meal in the evening, normally salmon and vegetables.’

Lou Piac

‘I eat lunch (200 cals) and tea (300 cals).’

Jo

‘Three meals – 150 cals for breakfast, 150 cals for lunch and 200 cals for dinner.’

Sarah

There are also plenty of tips about how to deal with the dreaded hunger pangs. The most frequent is simply, ‘By dreaming of tomorrow!’ but there are some other ideas too.

‘To deal with hunger pangs I drink a lot more fluid and look forward to my hot drinks as though they were food. I tend either to be more active in the evening or go to bed a bit earlier.’

Rachel

‘I drink more fluid, which helps with hunger pangs. I also try to do something interesting in the evening. I might go to the cinema or the theatre. In fine weather, I’ll go in the garden or out for a walk.’

Christina

‘I use drinks and snacks like Diet Coke, herbal tea, zero-fat yogurt and miso soups to take away the hunger pangs.’

Mikep

NORMAL DAYS

So now to the five normal days in a week. If you have tried the 5:2 diet before you may have heard the term ‘feast’ day bandied around for the non-diet days. This is a term I have made sure not to use here.

Let me explain. If you have tried the 5:2 diet before and found you didn’t lose much weight or you lost weight at the beginning and then it tailed off to nothing, then you are one of many. Lots of people who have problems losing weight on the 5:2 diet have the same problem. We are eating too much on our normal days and negating all the good work we are doing on our fast days.

Let’s look at me for example. In November 2012 I had been following the 5:2 plan for three months and was very close to my target weight. My plan was to continue following the plan right up to Christmas week, hopefully reaching my target weight in time for Christmas, and then I’d allow myself a week off. But as Christmas approached, although still sticking to my fast days, I stopped losing weight and even gained a pound or two. At the time I couldn’t understand it. But as I re-examined my goals after Christmas I realized how much I had been eating on my normal days. I would allow myself the mince pies or chocolates or fancy canapés because I could eat what I liked and enjoy it. In fact, I ate far more than I have done in previous years at Christmas because I felt I was justified in doing this, as I was still on a diet. But I’m sure, looking back, that I was eating far more than my recommended daily calories. No wonder the diet was no longer working for me.

The revelation that I had in the cold light of January is that you cannot go crazy, binge and eat rubbish for five days a week. It just cannot work. For sustained weight loss and a healthy, long life, you need to eat healthily on your non-fasting days too.

The difficult truth is that it took me until the end of February to get back to the weight I was the previous November. So if you are reading this because you are finding that the 5:2 diet isn’t working for you, then take a look at your ‘normal’ days and re-assess. The more people I have talked to about problems with the diet, the more often I find that this is the cause of a de-motivating failure of the 5:2 diet.

Since my moment of revelation in January, I have found a simple and logical solution. Feast days become normal, healthy days and the 5:2 diet is a winning formula once again. Here I set out the rules or suggestions that can make your normal days work for you. Don’t worry, I don’t suggest cutting out all fun and treats, but as with all healthy eating it involves saving snacks and chocolate for an occasional treat, rather than making them your standard diet. Your formula for a successful ‘normal’ day is as follows:

• Eat three healthy, balanced meals a day.

• Have light, healthy snacks such as fruit or yogurt if you feel peckish between meals.

• Do not calorie count or reduce portion size; you are not on a diet.

• Do be aware of what you are eating. Is it necessary? Is it healthy?

• Do allow yourself the occasional treat.

• Cut back on processed food and ready meals.

• Prepare home-cooked food as often as possible – the recipes in this book are just as good on a normal day as a fast day.

• If you are still hungry after a meal, wait 20 minutes and see if you are still hungry.

• Do allow yourself a glass of wine or two, a tasty dessert or even a few squares of dark (semisweet) chocolate.

Foods to avoid:

• biscuits (cookies) and cakes

• pastries

• crisps (potato chips)

• non-diet fizzy drinks

• chocolate bars and sweets (candies)

• beer, lager and cider

Use the recipes in this book as a guide for healthy, balanced eating. Just add rice, pasta and bread as necessary, but avoid processed additions.

Three of your normal days should also be exercise days. Try and get yourself into a good routine so the exercise becomes an integral part of your normal days. If you like, you can split your normal days into three healthy days with exercise and two normal days where you can be a little bit more relaxed. This means you can effectively have the weekend off. But remember, don’t go overboard and cancel out all the things you have achieved during the week.

My schedule looks something like this:

Tweaking the 5:2 diet for greater weight loss

If you are reading this without reading the section above about eating healthily on your normal days, then please have a look. It is by far the most likely reason that you are not achieving the desired weight loss. If, however, you think you are eating healthily on those days but would like to give yourself an extra push, then there are a number of additional options worth trying in the short term to help you reach your goals.

One of the things to try is extending the window. This means increasing the length of time you are fasting. A standard window might be from the last thing you eat the night before the fast until the time you eat breakfast the following morning. So if you start the fast on Sunday at 10 p.m. and fast until Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. then the total fasting time would be 34 hours. To extend the window to an optimum 36 hours, you could just make sure that you don’t eat after 8 p.m. on Sunday.

If, on the other hand, you find the 36-hour window a bit too long then you could try a 24-hour fast. This means starting at either 2 p.m. or 8 p.m. after lunch or dinner respectively and fasting until 2 p.m. or 8 p.m. the next day. This is slightly easier as you are eating a normal meal on both days, never having a full-day fast. This is also a good option if you don’t want to lose weight but want to gain some of the health benefits of the diet.

Another way to extend the diet is to add another day, making it a 4:3 diet. Try this if you want to lose some extra weight. The days should be non-consecutive, such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Finally, try a mix between the two. This is a kind of two-and-a-half-day diet. Have two normal days of fasting, say Monday and Wednesday – these are 36-hour fasts as described above – then have one day 24-hour fast day, say from 6 p.m. on Thursday to 6 p.m. on Friday. This is something I do occasionally and means I still get my relaxed weekend.

GETTING BEACH FIT

The 5:2 diet will help you lose weight and look and feel healthier, but to look good all over we need to look at body tone. The good news is that exercising just three times a week together with the two fast days will dramatically improve how you look and feel. There’s no magic cure, but fasting plus exercise should even improve the appearance of cellulite. Remember, all exercise should be done on your normal days, not on your fast days.

What to do if you are unfit or don’t exercise?

Start slow, but if you want to look good for summer I recommend walking or swimming. I wouldn’t recommend starting on the exercise programme in Part 4 without improving your general fitness first.

Walking is exceptionally good for you as a starting point for exercise. It’s free and very simple to start. Walk with a friend or take some music to listen to. Plan your route before you start and time yourself. You should be aiming to walk for 20 minutes, three times a week in the first week, increasing to 30 minutes, three times a week from the second week onwards. Your speed should be brisk with intent so it’s not a dawdle, but it’s not a speed test either. You should find that you naturally walk a little bit further every time you go out.

Swimming is another good way to get started with exercise. Choose your favourite stroke and swim gently, don’t push yourself – for 20 minutes in the first week, increasing to 30 minutes when you can. You could also try water walking, where you walk up and down through the swimming pool. The natural resistance of the water makes this a great exercise technique to try.

The Sculpt 30 exercise plan

If you exercise or have an active lifestyle then this programme is for you. Even if you don’t exercise regularly but are not sedentary then you can find success with this programme. This means if you are running around after active children or walk/cycle to work every day then you are ready to step up and look stunning for summer.

The 4-week plan on here has been especially designed to fit in with the 5:2 Bikini Diet and your life. By following the programme three times a week on your normal days, you will notice considerable changes in your body shape and tone.

The plan uses a combination of resistance training (for your muscles) and cardio exercises to raise your metabolism and burn body fat for up to 24 hours after each session. The exercises can be done at home with some basic equipment or at your local gym.

The plan is quick and fun, so you don’t have to spend hours on the treadmill. The training plan comprises 12 training sessions over four weeks that get progressively more difficult. For best results, make the three sessions a week part of your routine and don’t let anything interfere with them. Remember, it’s all about balance. Fitting this routine into your schedule is the simplest way to achieve amazing results.

Busting cellulite the 5:2 way

The 5:2 Bikini Diet is a fantastic way to reduce cellulite. Cellulite is just a type of body fat, but it is a horrible lumpy body fat that’s deposited in all the worst places: hips, thighs and bottom. What’s worse is that it has a dimpled ‘orange peel’ appearance that can make us feel self-conscious, especially in a swimsuit. The good news is that the 5:2 Bkini Diet is ideal for reducing cellulite, because when you lose weight through fasting, all the weight that you lose is body fat, and that includes cellulite.

The distinctive ugly appearance of cellulite comes from the fibrous tissue that only occurs in certain parts of the body like bottoms and thighs. In these areas, the fibres tether the skin to the muscle below. The cellulite is where the body fat bulges through the skin. The fibrous tissues cannot expand as the fat layer increases so we get the dimpled texture that we hate so much. You can’t do anything about the fibres connecting the skin to the muscle so the only way to reduce cellulite is to reduce fat in these areas and to increase the tone of the underlying muscles. By fasting two days a week to reduce the fat and exercising to increase the tone, you should see a marked reduction in cellulite.

‘Most surprisingly my cellulite seems to have melted. It used to be all over my bottom and on my thighs, but now there’s just a little bit on my bottom and I’m confident that will go too. I didn’t expect that kind of result at all, let alone so soon.’

Emma

There is a known medical process by which the body deposits fat on the hips and thighs. If we reverse that process then the fat will be removed from these areas first. An excess of insulin is one of the triggers for depositing fat in these areas. Intermittent fasting has been proven to reduce insulin levels, so that is one reason why the 5:2 Bikini Diet has an impact on cellulite in particular. Another trigger is an increase in oestrogen caused by pregnancy, the pill or HRT. If you are on the pill or HRT you may notice an increase in your cellulite. Other factors are smoking, too much alcohol and not enough exercise. If we keep these factors to a minimum, fast two days a week and exercise to increase muscle tone, we are doing everything possible to reduce cellulite.

Can I drink alcoholic drinks?

On a ‘normal’ day, yes, alcoholic drinks are definitely allowed. Obviously beverages that are higher in calories – such as beer and lager – should be kept in moderation, but wine and spirits are relatively low calorie and can be indulged.

On a ‘fast’ day I would not recommend drinking alcohol. It is unlikely that you can fit it in easily within your reduced calorie intake. If you do drink on a fast day it may make you feel light-headed and ultimately lead to you breaking the fast on that day.

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