Interesting Diet Scheme...

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Feast or famine: The diet that won't just help you lose weight, you'll live longer and be brainier!

By Jerome Burne
Last updated at 9:33 AM on 24th November 2009

As all dieters will know, there is nothing more tedious than counting calories or weighing foods for a meal plan. Especially if you then don't lose weight.

But there's now an effective weight-loss regimen that is not only simple, it promises significant health benefits - from easing asthma symptoms and reducing blood sugar levels, to fending off heart disease and breast cancer and protecting brain cells. Apparently, you'll also live longer.

The diet goes under various names - The Alternate-Day Diet, Intermittent Fasting or The Longevity Diet - but the principle is the same: eat very little one day (50 per cent of your normal intake) and as much as you like the next.

This appears to trigger a 'skinny' gene that encourages the body to burn fat.
diet

The Alternate-Day diet triggers a skinny gene that encourages the body to burn fat

Researchers first discovered the benefits of low-calorie eating in the Thirties. They found that putting a rat - or a worm, or a fruit fly or just about any animal, as it turned out - on a permanent very low calorie diet helped the animal live about 30 per cent longer than normal.

The animal had clearer arteries, lower levels of inflammation, better blood sugar control and its brain cells were less likely to get damaged. Meanwhile, rates of diseases linked to ageing all dropped.

But while scientists have known for years that animals on a low-calorie diet were healthier, no human - except a few iron-willed fanatics - could permanently stick to this regime.

The big breakthrough came in 2003 when Dr Mark Mattson, an American neuroscientist, discovered rats still enjoyed all those health benefits even when their calories were cut only on alternate days.

In other words, you don't have to starve yourself all the time.

This was a crucial discovery, because the diet suddenly became a realistic option. In particular, it is far more palatable for the obese. The standard diet for them involves a daily intake of between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of what they would normally have.

'These are very hard diets to follow,' says Krista Varady, assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

You are constantly hungry. The eat-every-other-day-diet seems to offer an easier and more effective option.'

She's just published the results of a ten-week trial of 16 patients, all weighing more than 14st.

They ate 20 per cent of their normal intake one day and a regular, healthy diet the next. Each lost between 10lb and 30lb; much more than the 5lb or 6lb expected.

'It takes about two weeks to adjust to the diet and, after that, people don't feel hungry on the fast days,' says Varady.
Posed by model

Weight watching: Dieters should only consume around 500 calories on fasting days

Dr James Johnson, author of The Alternate-Day Diet, and a lecturer in plastic surgery, has now been doing the diet for five years.

'I've always been a bit overweight. When I first started, I lost 35lb in 11 weeks.

'Now I use the diet to keep my weight stable. If it starts going up, I'll just go back on it for a few weeks. The evidence says this is about the most healthy thing you can do for yourself.'

One specific health benefit is relieving the symptoms of asthma - and that's not just because the patients have lost weight.

A small study of ten obese asthmatics found that after eight weeks they'd lost eight per cent of their body weight; their symptoms of the disease had also greatly improved.

The study, conducted by Dr Johnson with scientists from the National Institute on Ageing ( including Dr Mattson) and Stamford University, showed patients had less inflammation in their lungs, making it easier for them to breathe.

They also had lower levels of damaging free radicals - the substances we produce simply by eating and breathing - which have been linked with heart disease and cancer.

'The level of inflammation was down by 70 per cent and the level of free radicals by 90 per cent,' says Dr Johnson. 'No other dietary approach to asthma has recorded anything like that benefit.'

About two weeks after coming off the diet the patients' symptoms began to return.

Meanwhile, British researchers are now looking at the benefits of the diet in preventing breast cancer in highrisk patients.

'We've found a very low 800 calories-a- day diet dramatically lowers the enzymes that metabolise fat and glucose in breast tissue,' says Dr Michelle Harvie, of the Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre in Manchester. 'These enzymes are always raised in breast cancer patients.'

When Dr Matteson made his discovery, it wasn't clear exactly why very low calorie diets had such an effect on health and lifespan.

But in the past couple of years it's emerged that a specific gene - SIRT1 - might explain the diet's success; it seems the sudden, sharp stress of a big drop in food intake triggers this 'skinny' gene. 'This then blocks another gene involved in storing fat,' explains Dr Johnson.

'The body starts using up more of the fat stores. As a result you lose more weight than you would from just eating fewer calories.'


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The SIRT1 gene also seems to be responsible for all the benefits of semi-starvation found in animals - the drop in inflammation, lower blood sugar levels - as Dr Mattson and others reported this year in the journal Brain Research Reviews.

Perhaps not surprisingly, drug companies are working hard to develop medicines that imitate some of the diet's effects by targeting the SIRT1 gene.

The weight-loss benefit could also be due to the way the diet tricks your body's metabolism.

The problem with most diets is that after 48-to-72 hours this slows to compensate for the drop in food.

When you stop the diet and eat normally, the weight goes back on faster, as you're eating more than your body thinks it needs to function.

The alternate day diet seems to get round that because it allows normal eating as well.

'We've run trials that haven't found any reduction in metabolic rate when people are on the alternate day diet,' says Dr Johnson.
Woman eating a bowl of spaghetti

Enjoy: You can eat as much as you want on alternate days

How it works doesn't matter to many people - the internet is already buzzing with those who claim dieting on alternate days has made weight loss easier.

One woman writing on a U.S-based website found that very little of the weight she'd lost went back on.

'At the end of 2008 I lost 15lb and then I stopped the diet. Nine months later, in October, I'd only put on 2lb.

'By the end of that month I'd lost what I'd gained and another 7.5lb. It is gone forever! Woohoo.'

Another described how the not eating days - described as 'down' days - are actually the easiest ones to manage.

'It's strangely true, but down days are a lot easier to stick to than the up days. I haven't cheated on them once.

'It really does work knowing you can "have it" tomorrow. It's the eating days you have to be careful with as it would be quite easy to go over the top.'

Yet some British experts are concerned about the approach. 'We advise anyone trying to lose weight should follow a healthy balanced diet,' said a spokesperson for the Food Standards Agency.

'It may not be possible to achieve this with very low calorie diets.'

However, Catherine Collins, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, was more enthusiastic about the weightloss benefits.

'It sounds absolutely fine,' she says 'It would certainly make it easier to stick to a weight-loss programme, although I'd want to be sure people got enough fibre and protein and that they didn't starve and binge in a fanatical way.'

However, she is sceptical about the health benefits being triggered by the SIRT1 gene.

'We know weight loss has all sorts of metabolic benefits,' she says.

'That is probably what is going on rather than one gene being responsible.'

The big question now is to find the best schedule of eating and fasting that will bring the benefits and be the easiest to stick to. Alternate-day dieting has made the breakthrough, but it is only one option.

'At the moment we are studying the benefits of having just two fasting days a week when you have very few calories, then eating normally for the rest of the week,' says Dr Harvie.

'Some form of fasting regime is definitely the way to go to get big health benefits. It just needs more research.'

• For more, visit: http://www.johnson updaydowndaydiet.com/index.html

THE SIMPLE RULES YOU NEED TO FOLLOW

* For the first fortnight Dr Johnson suggests you stick to just 500 calories on the fasting days to make sure you trigger the skinny gene (to make certain of your intake, try pre-packaged shakes or meal replacements).

* After that, you can eat regular food on the fasting days. How much depends on your goal. Up to 35 per cent of your recommended daily intake will help you lose weight. Eating 50 or 60 per cent should allow you to maintain your weight.

* You can eat as much as you want on the alternate days, but don't binge. Make sure you have fruit and vegetables. It's important to enjoy these days to avoid getting fed up with being on a diet.

* Drink plenty of water and exercise regularly, especially on the eating days. Weigh yourself only once a week, on the morning after a fasting day, so you won't become frustrated by normal weight variations.


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