5:2

With my MS taking a keen interest in mucking with my insides I seem to be in a perpetual battle with my body to give up its protective padding. When your bowels have forgotten how to behave and your swallowing is hit and miss it seems like your entire GI tract is working to rule or less.

Despite exercising like a Trojan - walking with a purpose for at least 2.5km and averaging 5km with a 10-12 k walk thrown in one the weekends and the occasional run - and always hitting the 10000 steps a day target (love my fitbit flex) and eating between 1200 and 1500 kcal oriels a day I should be shedding the weight like mad but it just hangs on for dear life. Of course my weekly dulcolax tends to result in a major weight loss - 2kg on average. A bit does go back on but I can fairly clearly see that chronic constipation is affecting my weight loss.

So I was really interested in seeing Dr Michael Moseley's results when he looked at fasting on his documentary Eat Fast and live longer. He did the horrible ground work for me and tonnes of others to find that he got excellent results with fasting two non- consecutive days and "feasting" on the other five. Rather than fasting it is a severe reduction of calories on the two fast days -500 for women 600 for men. The idea is it reprogrammed our bodies back to the time when we might not get food everyday so the body learns to break down fat on fasting days and beyond.

I have decided to give it a go because it is also believed to lower your insulin resistance, something I have been concerned about considering I have a type two diabetic mother and my grandmother who died in her fifties also had type two diabetes. When I was on steroids for my optic neuritis and my blood sugars were being monitored since steroids can raise them I was getting some elevated numbers. It is also believed to help stave off Alzheimer's and memory loss so I'm in for that.

I have so far done two fast days with a feast day between and it was not too difficult. I chose to have a brunch of porridge on the first day and a small serving of dinner plus a few cups of tea. Today I had arranged to meet my mother for lunch and had a minor panic. I consulted my fitness pal And discovered I could have a bagel with a scraping of cream cheese, some avocado and tomato with a regular flat white with trim milk. It left enough for vege soup for dinner, a cup of tea or two and tonnes of green tea with jasmine. It was definitely tolerable and I had plenty of energy to walk Millie and to complete more than 10,000 steps.

I plan on giving it a month. I may solos introduce some more fibre into my day, probably through a supplement like Metamucil. So now I get to see what the scales say. I'm hoping this format is just the kick I need.