Fast Fads and Set Points

Updated 4.24.2014; reformatted 9.18.2015
So the 5:2 diet that my husband and I have followed for over a year is now routinely dismissed as a fad. I actually agree that it's a fad, but that and a dollar leaves you with 100 cents.

But I continue to read about the diet and others' reaction to it. Fasting as a diet strategy isn't new, and the 5:2, as defined by Michael Moseley, isn't actually a fast. Rather it's dieting scheme that creates the weekly calorie deficit in 2 days rather than over all 7. On the other days regular amounts of food are consumed.

But fasting regimes are the closest diet for comparison. This Atlantic article looked at various intermittent fasting diet plans, including the 5:2. The author interviewed the researchers or authors of the plans. Michael Moseley has a science degree, but he does not qualify as a diet researcher. But planned fasting as a diet control has received serious study. In particular, the researcher looking at the effects of eating every other day is interviewed.

This researcher who designed the "every other day" diet, where you do an austerity (and she calls it that) day in between each normal eating day is very dismissive of the 5:2— because it hasn't been studied the way she's studied her diet.

But her sniffy dismissal of the 5:2 diet with "people will binge after the fast day" because there are only 2 of them a week is laughable (to me). I think a better complaint would be that if you allow people the flexibility of choosing two days that can shift, that some will avoid them. As opposed to being locked into every other day.

Frankly, the reason the 5:2 is working for my husband is the flexibility. He would chafe at having to "fast" every other day with no break. (The researcher further elaborated that while dieting she says that every other day you eat 500/600 kcals, when at maintenance every other day is 1000 kcals).

Michael Mosely is interviewed as well. Moseley has no axe to grind with any researcher, he was simply looking for a way that would help him lower his visceral fat content and weight. He makes no pretense that this dieting regime is for everyone. And in fact, the one comment that ALL these people state is that fasting is NOT for everyone.

Which brings us to "Mindful" eating.

Sandra Aarnodt thinks diets don't work— though she does include the qualifier "usually." As she should, because diets clearly do work in the short term for everyone and May work for up to 20% of the population in the long term. Though you have quantify "long term." Linda Bacon and Health At Every Size proponents assert that by 5 years, only 5% of people will have kept the weight off. I am making an effort to determine the source for this stat that gets tossed around the fatosphere endlessly. Once I've done the research, I'll write it up.

The link is to Aarnodt's TED talk. I agree that fad diets or dietary changes that are only followed for a short time don't tend to work. But I know that there is a better way to diet. It takes a long time, but it's healthier and sustainable.

Sandra Aamodt's answer (she's a neurologist apparently) is "mindfulness" She begins by saying that she stopped dieting, learned how to eat mindfully and lost 10 pounds. She's not (and seemingly never was) obese. I base that comment on the fact that she claims she's lost 10 pounds mindfully eating. She might be "overweight" based on BMI, but she's definitely not obese.

In my case, I decided in my 20's that I wouldn't diet. And with only a few exceptions, I haven't "fad" dieted.... but it depends on what is meant by "dieting" or fad. As noted above, many people would say that I am following a fad diet right now.

What I have done is pick and choose between suggested habit changes and apply those. Some stuck, some didn't. They all "worked" while I did them, but anything that can't be done for the long term (or the rest of your life) won't work. So in that sense, many people fail at dieting because either:

• They never intend the changes to long term
• The changes they try don't fit in their lives and so they don't keep doing them.

I don't have a problem with "mindful eating;" if it works for you, go for it. But my preferred method is to not re-invent the wheel, so much as to gently try and change the wheel's direction. And I did so as I became aware that I didn't like the direction the wheel was rolling. (Meaning I was slowly packing on excess pounds.) For me, as a woman having given birth multiple times, pregnancy weight gain was part of my history, but in general, for me, it was just the slow addition of pounds over the years.

So what do I do? Because this is long, I put the rest of this topic on a second page.

Disclaimer