The Skinny on Fast-5: Cool Stuff

• Fast-5 has been around since 2005, and has grown worldwide without advertising because it works.
• Fast-5 is free. If you read the five words of Fast-5, you already have everything you need to get started. There’s no calorie counting, no points, no packaged food. If you insist on buying something, you can shop here and help us tell everyone what a cool tool Fast-5 is.
• Fast-5ers often see a lot of benefits besides weight loss: more energy, a more even and resilient mood and decreased symptoms of inflammatory diseases from simple allergies and hay fever to asthma, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.
• Fast-5 is good for the environment. Eating less often means you produce less packaging garbage while you lose weight and maintain that weight. Less waist, less waste. Get it?
• Fast-5 is compatible with your food preferences. Average American/Western diet? Okay! Vegetarian or vegan? Yes. Kosher? Check. Halal? No problem. Carnivore? Sure. Low Carb? Fine. Paleo? Yep. And “yes” to American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, Pritikin and Ornish diets. Vampire or zombie? You need more fiber.
• Fast-5 saves time and money. When you’re not preparing, eating and cleaning up after multiple meals every day, you save a lot of time. You eat out less often, so you save money.
• Food tastes better when your taste buds have had a nice long rest.
• Fast-5ers’ appetites often shift away from sweets and carbs to more healthy choices.
• Fast-5 is easier than it sounds. Once people are used to it, they often maintain the schedule (or something close to it) even after reaching their goal weight. Why wouldn’t you with all the cool stuff in this list going on?
• Fast-5 may help you achieve and maintain health for a longer life.

Not so cool stuff about Fast-5

• A lot of people will tell you it’s not healthy, but will not be able to tell you why. They just know it’s not. They’ve been brainwashed by advertising. Think for yourself: Obesity and overweight are risk factors for nine of the top ten killers in the USA. What could be unhealthy about losing that risk factor?
• Fast-5ers often feel a little cooler than their non-fasting colleagues because their gut muscles, which generate some heat when they are active, are not busy digesting a couple of meals. That’s cool in the summer, but it may mean wearing an extra layer in the wintertime. So it’s literally cool, but sometimes it’s not cool to be cool.
• Fast-5 doesn’t work for absolutely everyone: Only ninety-something percent.
• Your breath may smell or taste funny for a while as you adapt to running on your stored fat. The smell is from ketones produced as a normal part of burning fat, and it goes away as your body adapts to burning fat and slurps up the ketones as fuel.
• You don’t get to excuse yourself from trying Fast-5 because of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose, also called low blood sugar). If you haven’t proven you have hypoglycemia with a glucometer, it’s probably not real. Stop whining about it, get a glucometer and check your blood glucose when you feel like it’s low. Ask your doctor for help if you have trouble interpreting the results. Then, start getting rid of your excess fat. The feeling you call hypoglycemia may be real, but it’s not really because of hypoglycemia, and going for a while without food may be just the thing you need to get rid of that bad feeling. Go ahead. Check it.
• During the adaptation time (the first month or two of Fast-5), you may experience changes in sleep or in bowel habits – people have reported everything from constipation to no change to diarrhea. It passes, so to speak, as your gut adjusts to your new schedule.