noun

• A diet that involves eating normally for five days out of a seven-day period and greatly restricting the amount of food eaten on the other two days.

  ‘I've been on the 5:2 diet for seven weeks’

  More example sentences

  • ‘He is on the 5:2 diet, which involves severe calorie restriction for two days a week and normal eating the other five days.’
  • ‘In the past three months, he has lost two stone thanks to the 5:2 diet.’
  • ‘An academic suggested that our 5:2 diet, days of eating well followed by days of giving things up, is precisely the way medieval monks operated, with feasts and fasts.’
  • ‘Many people who have tried the 5:2 diet report that they have been successful in losing weight but this is the case for most weight-loss diets in the short term.’
  • ‘Starvation-type diets have side-effects such as dehydration, anxiety, irritability, tiredness and lethargy and whether we should be looking out for these in the 5:2 diet remains to be determined.’
  • ‘His fashionable 5:2 diet appears to be paying off, looking noticeably leaner on the breakfast TV sofa yesterday.’
  • ‘"I am on the new 5:2 diet. I've been doing it for about three weeks and am really hungry."’
  • ‘There is the 'cabbage soup diet'; "5:2 diet"; and then high protein diets such as Atkins, Zone and South Beach, etc.’
  • ‘The 5:2 diet recommends 500 calories for women and 600 for men, but these recommendations seem arbitrary.’