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’
‘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.’
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