Juice Fasting or 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

5:2 intermittent fasting or juice fasting can be an excellent way for you to regain control over your diet, lose weight, and enjoy improvements to your physical and mental health. There are pros and cons to each of these approaches, and this is what I’m going to be talking about here.

The Pros and Cons of Juice Fasting

I completed a 15 day juice fast last month. I greatly enjoyed this experience, and I expect to repeat this type of fasting in the future. The pros of this approach when compared to 5:2 intermittent fasting would include:

• Hunger isn’t really a problem with juice fasting because you are consuming calories from the juices.
• You only need to juice fast for about three days to notice the health improvements.
• Some of the juices are delicious – it can feel more like juice feasting than Juice fasting
• You should lose about one pound (0.45 kg) in weight per day on a juice fast.

The cons of juice fasting would include:

• You need to buy a juicer – I spent 3,600 THB (85 Euro or US $115) for a juicer here in Thailand
• It can be expensive to purchase all the vegetables and fruit you need for your juices
• If you drink coffee, you are going to need to stop this for the duration of the fast (I cheated by drinking green tea).
• If your juices contain too much sugary fruit, you could have high blood sugar levels for the duration of the fast – I made this mistake the first time I tried juice fasting.
• You don’t really get hungry on a juice fast, but you are likely to really miss solid food.
• You can’t juice fast forever

The Pros and Cons of 5:2 Intermittent Fasting

The pros of the 5:2 fasting diet would include:

• You only need to go without food for two days of the week – you can eat normally for the rest of the week.
• You can eat 500 calories first thing on your fast day – you then go for 24 hours after this without food.
• I don’t usually feel hungry until the last few hours of the fast (the trick is to eat a high protein meal before you start).
• Some people find that it is easier to be good for just two days of the week.
• It is probably feasible to commit to 5:2 fasting for the rest of your life – I wouldn’t want to do this.

The cons of the 5:2 fasting diet include:

• You have a 24-hour period with no food – you are going to experience a bit of hunger.
• The benefits of 5:2 fasting are not so obvious because the fasting days are so spread out.
• The claim that you can eat what you want on your non-fast days doesn’t seem to be valid (at least not for me). I stopped losing weight during my first attempt at 10-weeks of 5:2 fasting because I was eating too much on my normal days.

Juice Fasting and Intermittent Fasting

It is possible to combine juice fasting and intermittent fasting. This means you would drink juices on your fast days. It is a good compromise if you want to enjoy some of the benefits of fasting without having to deal too much with hunger. I’m thinking about doing one day of juice fasting every week once I reach the end of my ten weeks of 5:2 intermittent fasting.