So here I am visualising cheeseburgers while I swig resentfully from my bottle of water.
I'm not sure which part of me is more outraged, my growling stomach or my chocoholic brain.
But I have a plan.
My handful of Christmas excess has prompted a total rethink my dieting choices. While I'm not monstrously huge, I have certainly overindulged, and so I find myself attempting intermittent fasting.
As a diet sceptic, I am very dubious about the next greatest Big Fat Diet, but science and the fitness industry are behind this one in a big way.
The concept of intermittent fasting is easy: Alternate days of eating normally with fasting days on which you eat much fewer calories—and the weight should fall off.
As well as being a cynic, I am weak. So instead of the version known as 5:2., where you eat normally for five days and fast for two. I am attempting the more manageable 16.8 where you do all your eating in one eight hour block and then fast for the other 16 hours of the day.
It is also called the Wolverine Diet as a result of Hugh Jackman who used this method (along with savage exercise) to lose fat fast while bulking up for the role in the movie, Wolverine.
It is daunting. But that pudding isn't going to shift itself.
The eight-hour window is adjustable to suit your lifestyle. I'm not a huge breakfast person anyway so I am going to be doing all my eating between 11 am and 7 pm. This way I can still have an evening meal with my family. You can eat normally but you may well make better food choices because you are conscious of the narrow window you can consume them in.
The science behind intermittent fasting is fascinating. The first study was led by Krista Varady, a nutritional scientist at the University of Illinois. She has looked at more than 600 people in eight clinical trials of alternate-day fasting, and she's found that obese people reliably lose weight at a very safe rate—about 2 pounds a week. She also found that cholesterol and blood sugar levels improved when people fasted on alternate days. The on-and-off deprivation means your body eats its way through the glucose stores in about 10 hours. Then your body is forced to use fat for fuel. Varady discovered you lose over 90 per cent of the weight from fat, 15 per cent more than with typical diets and just 10 per cent from muscle.
And there is more.
A study carried out by the University of Florida found that alternate day fasting can prompt your cells to make more copies of the longevity gene known as SIRT3 that improves cells' ability to repair themselves. Alternative fasting can also boost proteins that strengthen neurones that are vital for learning and memory.
My Wispa addiction will suffer for sure, but clever and lighter? I will take that.
Updates to follow!
