The 5-Day Diet: Lose weight, supercharge your energy and reboot your health

Not for me. Returned it.

I followed this diet eagerly and carefully. The results were fantastic. I gave it a fair trial by doing everything as written. The kale crispy recipe needs a little more water to bind it together. Judge as appropriate. (This is the only mistake I found in the first edition) I lost 7.4lbs, Hips shrank 1inch, Waist shrank 1 1/2 inches, Muscle mass % increased by 1.9%, BMI dropped by 0.9. When I finished I felt brilliant. Day 3 to 4 were the days I started to feel better. Autophagy really worked for me. It refreshed my whole experience. My lungs were like new, found it easier to breathe. I was calm, relaxed yet awake. Only needed 7 hours sleep no alarm, no need to lie in bed waiting to drop off. Out like a light. The different elements in this diet are important, all is explained. For me the five day diet also reset my ability to burn fat on the Low GL diet. This has continued a year after doing the five day diet. Patrick recommends for those who are ill to do it once a month and those who aren’t to do it once a quarter. This fits with me because after a month a lot of the benefits were rounding off. The Ketoscan mini helped me to judge when I was in Ketosis. This made me confident the diet was working.

This diet is a revelation. If everybody did it our hospitals would probably be half-empty. Holford knows his science and claims that this is even more efficacious for autophagy than the 5/2 and I believe him as the 5/2 didn't really work for me. At 800 cals a day for five days you do get a bit hungry, but the gelatinous water drink helps and the meals are so delicious that I loved the eating element of it. The headache wasn't as bad as with other fasts I've done and I felt renewed, refreshed, energetic, and thoroughly hoovered, washed and polished inside. The supplements are quite expensive but they are very high quality and help with energy and liver detox. I can't wait until after Christmas so I can do it again, regularly. If this review doesn't register as a 'verified purchase' it may be because I bought the book from his website.

Be prepared to spend approx £200 on Holford’s supplements before you can even start. Not to mention the expensive and hard-to-find foods required like seaweed crisps and kimchi (to name but a few).The diet is basically a small almond milk shake in the morning, a tiny meal for lunch, and soup for supper. With tiny snacks mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Washed down with a disgusting gloopy water-based potion throughout the day. And tonnes of pills (which are massive by the way, so not a good diet if you can’t swallow pills whole).This diet sells itself as a you-won’t-be-hungry-while-you-do-this-diet diet. But I was hungry. Permanently. And weak, shakey, dizzy, despite doing it by the book. I could not stop thinking about bacon sandwiches and chinese takeaway. I was ragingly hangry for the entire 5 days and inexplicably weighed the same on day 5 as I did on day 1.

But it's just too complicated with too many ingredients and extras for meals, and I found the supplements to take very confusing. Got totally overwhelmed with it all and living on my own, and more for nutrition experts than for the general public. Patrick Holford though has done some wonderful research and I'm sure it would be better to be locked up for five days and someone giving you all that you need. I am sure that would work for in essence, Patrick is right. Just overwhelming for some of us.