The Fast Diet: The secret of intermittent fasting � lose weight, stay healthy, live longer (6 page)

By the time Nora had to undergo her fourth course of chemo she had decided once again to try fasting. This time things went much better and she made a good recovery. She is currently cancer free.

Nora is convinced she benefitted from fasting but it’s hard to be sure because she wasn’t part of a proper medical trial. Valter and colleagues at University of Southern California did, however, study what happened to her and 10 other patients with cancers who had also decided to put themselves on a fast.
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All of them reported fewer and less severe symptoms after chemotherapy and most of them, including Nora, saw improvements in their blood results. The white cells and platelets, for example, recovered more rapidly when they had chemo in a fasted state than when they did not. But why did Nora go rogue? Why didn’t she fast under proper supervision?

‘I decided to fast based on years of information from animal testing. I do agree that if you are going to do crazy things like I do you should have medical supervision. But how? None of my doctors would listen to me.’

Nora’s self-experiment could have gone wrong, which is just one reason why such maverick behaviour is not recommended. Her experience, however, and that of the other nine cancer patients, helped inspire further studies.

For example, Professor Valter Longo and his colleagues have recently completed Phase I of a clinical trial to see if fasting around the time of chemotherapy is safe, which it seems to be. The next thing is to assess whether it makes a measurable difference. At least ten other hospitals around the world are either doing or have agreed to do clinical trials. Go to our website for the latest updates.

As you’ve read, I started out by trying the four-day fast under Professor Valter Longo’s supervision. But despite the improvements in my blood biochemistry and his obvious enthusiasm, I could not imagine doing lengthy fasts on a regular basis for the rest of my life. So what next? Well, having met Dr Krista Varady and learnt all about ADF (Alternate Day Fasting) I decided to give that a go.

After a short while, however, I realised that it was
just too tough, physically, socially and psychologically. I need some pattern in my life and not being able to tell without a calendar and lengthy calculations whether I could meet friends for dinner on a particular night was irksome. I also found fasting every other day just a little too challenging. I realise that many of Krista’s volunteers do manage to stick to it, but they are in a trial situation and highly motivated. It is undoubtedly an effective way to lose weight rapidly and to get powerful changes to your biochemistry, but it was not for me. So I decided to try eating 600 calories for two days a week. It seemed a reasonable compromise and, more importantly, doable.

I tried eating all my food in one meal, as Krista does in her studies, but I discovered that if I skipped breakfast I started to feel hungry and irritable well before lunch. So I split my food in two: a moderate breakfast, miss lunch, a light supper. And I did it twice a week. This I found extremely manageable.

After experimenting with different versions of fasting, I found the 5:2 approach is the most effective and workable way for me to get the benefits of fasting and still retain a long-term commitment to a dietary plan. A 5:2 Fast Diet is a realistic synthesis of the current thinking on Intermittent Fasting, and the best way I know to guarantee success.

Before embarking on the diet, I decided to get myself properly tested, to see what effects it would have on my body. The following are the tests I did. Most are
straightforward
. 
The blood tests are, with one exception, tests your doctor should be happy to do for you.

The first and most obvious thing you will want to do is weigh yourself before embarking on this adventure. Initially, it is best to do this at the same time every day. First thing in the morning is, as I’m sure you know, when you will be at your lightest.

Ideally you should get a weighing machine that measures body-fat percentage as well as weight, since what you really want to see is body-fat levels fall. The cheaper machines are not fantastically reliable; they tend to underestimate the true figure, giving you a false sense of security. What they are quite good at doing, however, is measuring change. In other words, they might tell you when you start that you are 30% body fat when the true figure is closer to 33%. But they should be able to tell you when that number begins to fall.

Body fat is measured as a percentage of total weight. The machines you can buy do this by a system called impedence. There’s a small electric current that runs through your body and the machine measures the resistance. It does its estimation based on the fact that muscle and other tissues are better conductors of electricity than fat.

The only way to get a truly accurate figure is with a machine called a DXA (formerly DEXA) scan. It stands for ‘Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry’. It is expensive and for most people unnecessary. Your BMI will tell you if you are overweight. Women tend to have more body fat than men. A man with body fat of more than 25% would be considered overweight. For a woman it would be 30%.

To calculate your BMI, go to a website such as www.nhs.uk/tools/pages/healthyweightcalculator.aspx. This will not only do the calculation, but also tell you what it means. One criticism of BMI is that someone who has a lot of muscle could get a high BMI score. This is not an issue for most of us. Sadly.

BMI is useful but it may not be the best predictor of future health. In a study of over 45,000 women followed for 16 years, the waist-to-height ratio was a superior predictor of who would develop heart disease. The reason why the waist matters so much is that visceral fat, which collects inside the abdomen, is the worst sort of fat, because it causes inflammation and puts you at much higher risk of diabetes. You don’t need fancy equipment to tell you if you have internal fat. All you need is a tape measure.

Male or female, your waist should be less than half
your height. Most people underestimate their waist size by about two inches because they rely on trouser size. Instead, measure your waist by putting the tape measure around your belly button. Be honest. A definition of optimism is someone who steps on the scale, while holding their breath. You are fooling no one.

You should be able to get standard tests on the NHS.

These are the results of the physical measurements I took before starting the Fast Diet:

I wasn’t obese, but both my BMI and my body-fat percentage told me that I was overweight. I knew from doing an MRI scan that much of my fat was collected internally, wrapping itself in thick layers around my liver and kidneys, disturbing all sorts of metabolic pathways.

Clearly, the fat wasn’t all inside my abdomen. Quite a bit had collected around my neck. This meant that I was snoring. Loudly. Neck size is a powerful predictor of whether you will snore or not.
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A neck size above 16.5” for men or 16 inches for women means you are in the danger zone.

According to this data, my fasting glucose was worryingly high. I was not yet a diabetic but I had signs of what is called impaired glucose tolerance, pre-diabetes. My LDL was far too high, but I was to some extent protected by the fact that my triglycerides were low and my HDL high. This is not a good picture, though.

My IGF-1 levels were also too high, suggesting rapid turnover of cells and increased cancer risk.

After three months on the Fast Diet there were some remarkable changes.

I had lost about 19lb, almost one and a half stone. My BMI and body-fat percentage were now respectable. I
had to go out and buy smaller belts and tighter trousers. I could fit into a dinner jacket I hadn’t worn for ten years. I had also stopped snoring, which delighted my wife and quite possibly the neighbours. Even better, my blood indicators had improved in a spectacular fashion.

My wife Clare, who is a doctor, was astonished. She regularly sees overweight patients with blood chemistry like mine had been and she said that none of the advice she gives has anything like the same effect.

For me, the particularly pleasing changes were in my fasting glucose levels and the huge drop in my IGF-1 levels, which matched the changes I had seen after doing a four-day fast.

Clare, however, felt I was losing weight too fast, that I should consolidate for a while. That is why I decided to go on a maintenance dose of fasting just one day a week. Unless it’s the weekend, holidays or a special occasion, I also, regularly, skip lunch.

What has happened is that my weight has stayed steady at 12 stone and my bloods remain in good shape. I do, however, think there is room for improvement and will shortly restart a two-day regime and blog about it. If you are interested then do visit our website, www.thefastdiet.co.uk.

Let’s recap on what we’ve learnt. The reason for Intermittent Fasting – briefly but severely restricting the amount of calories you consume – is that by doing so you are hoping to ‘fool’ your body into thinking it is in a potential famine situation and that it needs to switch from go-go mode to maintenance mode.

The reason our bodies respond to fasting in this way is that we evolved at a time when feast and famine were the norm. Our bodies are designed to respond to stresses and shocks; it makes them healthier, tougher. The scientific term is hormesis – that which does not kill you makes you stronger. The benefits of fasting include: