Free The Fast Diet: The secret of intermittent fasting � lose weight, stay healthy, live longer by Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer

Unlike deprivation diets that have failed you before, on this plan, tomorrow will always be different. Easier. There may be pancakes for breakfast, or lunch with friends, wine with supper, apple pie with cream. This On/Off switch is critical. It means that, on a fast day, though you’re eating a quarter of your usual calorie intake, tomorrow you can eat as you please. There’s boundless psychological comfort in the fact that your fasting will only ever be a short stay, a brief break from food.
    When you’re not fasting, ignore fasting – it doesn’t own you, it doesn’t define you. You’re not even doing it most of the time. Unlike full-time fad diets, you’ll still get pleasure from food, you’ll still have treats, you’ll engage in the regular, routine, food-related events ofyour normal life. There are no special shakes, bars, rules, points, affectations or idiosyncrasies. No saying ‘no’ all the time. For this reason, you won’t feel serially deprived – which, as anyone who has embarked on the grinding chore of long-term every-day dieting, the kind that makes you want to commit hara-kiri right there on the kitchen floor every time you open the fridge door, is precisely why conventional diet plans fail.
    The key, then, is to recognise, through patience and the exercise of will, that you can make it through to breakfast. Bear in mind that fasting subjects regularly report that the food with which they ‘break their fast’ tastes glorious. Flavours sing. Mouthfuls dance. If you’ve ever felt a lazy disregard for the food you consume without thinking, then things are about to change. There’s nothing like a bit of delayed gratification to make things taste good.
Compliance and sustainability: how to discover a sensible eating pattern that works for you
     
    Most diets don’t work. You know that already. Indeed, when a team of psychologists at UCLA conducted an analysis of 31 long-term diet trials back in 2007, they concluded that ‘several studies indicate that dieting is a consistent predictor of future weight gain… We asked what evidence there is that dieting works in the long term,and found that the evidence shows the opposite.’ Their analysis found that, while slimmers do lose pounds in the early months, the vast majority return to their original weight within five years, while ‘at least a third end up heavier than when they embarked on the project’. 24 The standard approach clearly hasn’t worked, doesn’t work and won’t work.
    In order to be effective, then, any method must be rational, sustainable, flexible and feasible for the long haul. Adherence, not weight loss per se, is the key, so your goals must be realistic and the programme practical. It must fit into your life as it is, not the life of your dreams. It needs to go on holiday with you, it needs to visit friends, get you through a boring day at the office and cope with Christmas. To work at all, any weight-loss strategy has to be tolerable, organic and innate, not some spurious add-on that makes you feel awkward and self-conscious, the dietary equivalent of uncomfortable shoes.
    While the long-term experience of Intermittent Fasters is still under investigation, people who have tried it comment on how easily it fits into everyday life. They still get variety from food (anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight on ‘only’ grapefruit or cabbage soup will know how vital this is). They still get rewards from food. They still get a life. There is no drama, no desperate dieting, no self-flagellation. No sweat.

Flexibility: your key to success
     
    Your body is not my body. Mine is not yours. So it’s worth carving out your plan according to your needs, the shape of your day, your family, your commitments, your preferences. We none of us live cookie-cutter lives, and no single diet plan fits all. Everyone has quirks and qualifiers. That’s why there are no absolute commandments here, just suggestions. You may choose to fast in a