Featured image: picture of Millie (courtesy of Millie Coaker) – graphic created on Canva by Tara Davies
When Millie Coaker was 16, both her and her dad both took up the 5:2 diet as a way to lose weight. The now-21-year-old described the diet as, “A calorie deficit but it’s just twice weekly rather than everyday. Two days a week you fast, eating around 500 calories.”
5:2 is a type of intermittent fasting diet and was popularised by TV journalist Michael Mosely. The diet is liked by many as it gives you the freedom to eat without strict calorie restrictions for the most part of each week. Millie explained, “It’s more of a lifestyle change rather than a diet.”
She followed the diet for nearly two years, fasting only two days a week for the first four months;
“As time went on, I was seeing it was really working and then I just completely stopped eating. I was doing it every day and I would tell my parents I had eaten or I was just on a fast day. At the height of it, I was only eating 600 calories a day,” She said.
After months of keeping to the diet, Millie’s dad became considerably underweight and started to lose not just fat but muscle too. She recalled, “My mum sat us down and said: Look, you’re both taking this too far. But because, at the beginning, my parents and everyone else kept complimenting my weight loss, I thought: Oh, I’m going to keep going because this is having such a positive effect.“
One day Millie was pulled aside by her college teacher, who told her she hadn’t seen her eat lunch for a year. Millie added, “She whipped out a McDonalds burger, saying she had bought me some lunch and that I needed to eat. But I just couldn’t. I felt physically sick just smelling the burger. I told her I was fine and she said you don’t look fine.”
The chat with her teacher prompted Millie to begin reading up on disordered eating; “Although it didn’t properly go into my head that I had an eating disorder because I wasn’t eating properly –– I did think, okay, what I’m doing is incredibly unhealthy. I’ve lost too much weight too quickly.”
When Millie reflected on her experience with extreme dieting she said, “I think I was justifying it because I was also going to the gym, four days a week. I thought this was a healthy lifestyle. I was exercising and I wasn’t eating bad food.” When Millie did eat, it wouldn’t be much more than one low-calorie ready meal a day: “People started telling me it was great I was going to the gym but I also needed to eat balanced meals and allow myself more than I was currently giving myself. And half the time I didn’t even enjoy the microwave meals I was actually eating.”
Our Diet Culture spoke to naturopath Glenys Collings about the 5:2 diet and those who end up taking it to the extremes. She said, “There’s a lot of research and evidence to support intermittent fasting. However, I don’t personally do that and I don’t personally recommend it.”
There’s no denying that many people have 5:2 success stories and don’t fall into habits of disordered eating. However, the likeliness is that these people have the ability to look after themselves properly whilst doing it.Bearing this in mind, Collings added, “It does work for some people, but then it so much depends on people’s mental health. Like alcohol –– you can have a glass of wine or a few drinks now and again, and not everybody will become an alcoholic. Everybody is different.”
If you’re somebody who finds intermittent fasting is right for you, Collings recommends fasting overnight. She says, “Have your evening meal as early as possible, say six o’clock. Then if you don’t have your breakfast till eight o’clock, that’s 14 hours of fasting. I personally believe that’s a healthy way to do it and it’s achievable.”
Glenys Collings’s top tip for intermittent fasters is: “It’s really important you eat a protein based meal after fasting. This is because your blood sugar’s down and your body’s saying: I want some food to make me feel better. The protein can stop you from overeating.”
This is because protein reduces the level of gherkin, your hunger hormone, as well as boosting the hormone that makes you feel full. Protein also ‘feeds’ your muscles therefore, when losing weight, can help preserve muscle mass whilst still losing fat.
Different lifestyle changes for weight loss work for different people. It’s extremely important to take care of your body and not get too hung up on trying to speed up your weight loss. If you are wondering whether the 5:2 diet is right for you, you can read the NHS’s analysis on it here.
Our Diet Culture 