The Fast Diet

The size of the sugar spike depends both on the food itself, and on how much of it you eat. For example, we tend to eat a lot more potatoes in one sitting than kiwi fruit. So there’s also a measure called GL, the Glycaemic Load, which: GI x grams of carbohydrate 100

I assumed that when you get hungry it builds and builds until it becomes intolerable, and so you bury your face in a vat of ice cream. I found instead that hunger passes and once you have been really hungry you no longer fear

Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1. IGF-1, as its name implies, has growth-promoting effects on almost every cell in your body. It keeps your cells constantly active. You need adequate levels of IGF-1 and other growth factors when you are young and growing, but high levels later in life appear to lead to accelerated ageing and cancer. As Valter put it, i

Within a few hours, glucose circulating in the blood is consumed. If that’s not being replaced by food then the body turns to glycogen, a stable form of glucose that is stored in the muscles and liver.

One other significant benefit to Intermittent Fasting is that you don’t seem to lose muscle, which you would on a normal calorie-restricted regime. Krista herself is not sure why that is and wants to do further research.

As a basic guide, you might anticipate a loss of around a pound with each fast day. This will not, of course, be all fat. Some will be water, and the digested food in your system. You should, however, lose around ten pounds of fat over a ten-week period, which beats a typical low-calorie diet. Crucially, you can expect to maintain your weight loss

Male or female, your waist should be less than half your height.

Broadly speaking a GI over 50 or a GL over 20 is not good, and the lower both figures are the better.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, no foods are off-limits, none proscribed. On the five days a week when we’re not restricting calories, we both eat freely – fish and chips, roast potatoes, biscuits, cake. The Illinois study certainly found that volunteers encouraged to eat lasagne, pizza and fries during ‘off days’ still lost weight.