Martin Clunes has recently been showing off his three stone weight loss, after the much-loved actor shed the pounds in just a few months – and he says it was ‘easy’
Martin Clunes lost a remarkable three stone in three months – and paid thanks to one particular trick. The 63-year-old actor previously opened up about his drastic weight loss in an interview with MailOnline, suggesting that it resulted from a so-called ‘5:2 diet’.
“I was fat – and while I was getting heavy, I had tired knees and stuff,” the Doc Martin star said at the time. “So I thought I’d try that diet and the weight came off.”
The 5:2 diet, also dubbed The Fast Diet, is an intermittent fasting plan popularised by the late TV doctor Michael Mosley. It involves eating a normal amount of calories across five days of the week, before drastically cutting intake for the other two.
These days are what’s referred to as ‘fasting’ days, where dieters typically limit calorie intake to 500 for women and 600 for men per day. Experts at Healthline explain: “You can choose whichever two days of the week you prefer, as long as there is at least one non-fasting day in between them.
“One common way of planning the week is to fast on Mondays and Thursdays, with two or three small meals, then eat normally for the rest of the week.” Martin also lauded the diet for its cholesterol benefits, but added that later tweaked the routine to 6:1 fasting days.
BirminghamLive also reports that celebrities like Sherlock sensation Benedict Cumberbatch and Jennifer Aniston have previously given similar fasting diets the thumbs up too. “It’s easy and seems to keep the weight off me,” Martin added in the 2017 conversation.
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Beyond celebrities, residents of the world’s rare ‘Blue Zones’ – where residents reportedly often live to 100 years old – restrict calorie intake as part of a rigid practice known as the ‘80% trick’. This involves eating just one modest meal in the later part of the day, but conscientiously stopping at 80% satiety—hence this rule’s moniker.
Dr Deborah Lee, a GP at Dr Fox Pharmacy, previously told the Mirror: “Imagine what 80% of your meal would look like, and aim to leave 20% behind.
“Calorie restriction is believed to slow the ageing process. Eating less lowers the metabolic rate. With less metabolic processes underway, less oxidation is taking place. Oxidative stress probably underpins the development of many of the chronic diseases we see today – heart disease, cancer, type-2 diabetes and dementia.”
