The Fad Diet to End All Fad Diets
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In 2012, the BBC aired a documentary that pushed diet culture to a new extreme. For Eat, Fast, and Live Longer, the British journalist Michael Mosley experimented with eating normally for five days each week and then dramatically less for two, usually having only breakfast. After five weeks, he’d lost more than 14 pounds, and his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels had significantly improved. The documentary, and the international best-selling book that followed, set the stage for the next great fad diet: intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting has become far more than just a fad, and before it. The diet remains popular more than a decade later: By one count, practiced it last year. Intermittent fasting has piqued the interest of , , and alike, and for reasons that go beyond weight loss: The diet is used to help and is held up as a productivity hack because of its purported effects on cognitive performance, .
