Five Two For a New You: The Fast Formula for a Happier, Healthier Life

By Janet Menzies

The 5:2 diet method, in which dieters fast for two days and eat normally for the other five, took the world by storm and has blown a breath of fresh air through the dieting world. But why not apply these principles to other areas of life? In this timely book author Janet Menzies invites us to see how 5:2 can work in all aspects of our everyday lives - from health and fitness and improving our work/life balance to re-enlivening tired relationships, organizing parenting, even beating the years.
With solid research and sound advice throughout, 5:2 Your Life will help you restore balance in your home and work life - and bring some relaxation and less stress into even the most frantic day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Release date: Dec 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782432357

Janet Menzies

Janet Menzies is a professional author and journalist who breeds, trains and works cocker spaniels. She is a gundog and shooting correspondent for The Field magazine and writes a monthly blog on gundog training for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC). She has had success with five Field Trial Champions, the majority of which she bred herself. The best known is FTCh Gournaycourt Ginger, one of the most consistent cockers of recent years.

Book preview

Life

What Five:Two Can Do For You

Sometimes your life feels like a balancing act. Now here’s a method to put your life in balance. Five:Two For a New You can teach you how to improve your figure and fitness, how to make your relationships less stressful, and even how to put the life back into your working life. You will learn methods to help organize many different aspects of life so that you can achieve the goals you want. You can use the regime to beat the signs of ageing and bring some relaxation into even the most frantic schedule.

We all know that balance is important, but modern life can make it impossible to keep that balance. Twenty-four/seven social media, advertising pressure, work demands, and constant juggling, all mean that we lose sight of the simple basics to enjoy life. This book gives you the techniques to get back in control, without having to give up the things you enjoy. Once you get used to the method, you can apply it to anything in your life that you want to regain control of. Instead of all-or-nothing rules that can’t be kept, you will learn the arts of balance and compromise that will last you for ever.

Five:Two turns ‘I ought to’ into ‘I want to’

Two of great is worth Five of OK

Five:Two makes ‘I should’ into ‘I will’

Wonky wheels?

If your life is out of balance it’s like trying to get the supermarket shop done when you’ve grabbed a trolley with a wonky wheel. You know what happens – the thing has a mind of its own and you keep crashing into the shelf stacks. It’s a huge struggle to get it going straight, and then that wonky wheel keeps dragging it off-course. And as you get more stuff in the trolley the problem gets worse and worse. By the time you’re back out in the car park, you’re shattered from trying to push against that wonky wheel all the time. The whole thing is exhausting.

It’s just the same if your life has a ‘wonky wheel’. You think you’re back on track for a while, but then more stuff is going on in your life – just like your supermarket trolley getting fuller – and pretty soon the wonky wheel underneath is pulling you back off-course again. Like trying to go up and down the aisles, even day-to-day life becomes a huge struggle when things are out of balance.

Get your trolley back on track

But the original idea of supermarket trolleys was to make shopping easier. When you happen to pick a brand-new trolley with smooth wheels, you whisk round the aisles in no time. Even when you have a really big weekly shop and there are loads of things in your trolley, the wheels are running so well that you’ve soon got all the bags in the boot of the car with a minimum of effort. It will be just the same when you learn the techniques in this book. No more wonky wheels – every day will be a new trolley day. Even if your life is really busy – just like a very full supermarket trolley – you will be able to keep all those different things in balance, so that you can cope comfortably without feeling you are being dragged in different directions.

The balanced life

Just imagine waking up in the morning with a sense that you are looking forward to the day, even if you know you’ve got a really busy time ahead of you. You may have a dozen different things that need to be done, but with these balance methods, you are going to be equal to all of them. It will put an end to that feeling that things are getting out of hand, because if things are in balance, they can’t get on top of you.

All the different formulas are here to help you with a load of different problems you may be worried about. The formulas act like recipes, giving you a step-by-step approach to solving your anxieties. It’s all about finding the right solution for your particular issue.

Waking up to a new you

You will be amazed at the change in your life once you have started using the new formulas. Remember the difference when you swap that wonky trolley for a new one? Without the strain of pushing the wonky trolley, suddenly you will find you have mounds more energy. Things that seemed almost impossibly difficult will feel quite achievable.

When I made this programme a regular, permanent part of my life, I couldn’t believe how different I felt about things. The first thing I noticed was how much less physically tired I was. This surprised me because I didn’t think that my issues were physical ones. But the stress of being out of balance all the time was actually having a physical impact on fatigue and lost sleep. Some friends said I actually looked like I had grown an inch! I think this was because I really did feel like a wonky trolley, all twisted out of shape with worry. When I fixed that wonky wheel, it felt like I was able to stand up taller – it had genuinely taken a weight off my shoulders.

I noticed more changes. After I had been using this method for a while, and had got the hang of how to apply it in different situations, I began to feel a really unusual thing. Problems – even quite stressful ones – hardly worried me at all. It really was an out-of-the-ordinary feeling. If a difficult situation, or even a real crisis, blew up at home, or about work, or with family and friends, I began to react in a way that was much more calm and confident. I would say to myself: ‘Hmm, this is a tricky one, but this technique will have the answer. If I just give myself a while to work out how I can apply it, I will find a solution.’

Feeling positive – permanently

Then gradually, this more positive attitude towards life issues developed into being my normal mindset. As a writer, I suppose I’m naturally a creative person, and I think what must have happened with the help of this method was that a lot of my energy was freed up to use towards the fun, creative, happy aspects of life, rather than being wasted on worrying about all those out-of-balance issues. I found my enjoyment of life sky-rocketed. Even the most simple of things became really noticeable pleasures. Taking time to home-cook a lovely meal. Sitting down for an hour with a good book. Walking the dogs. I know they are only little things, but I suddenly found I was enjoying them as much as a foreign holiday. I began to look forward to every day – even the ones that were going to be hectic or difficult.

And the very odd thing is that nothing factual has actually changed in my life at all. I haven’t fallen in love or won the lottery – I just feel as if I have! I do hope you enjoy reading this book, and that you find it easy to use the formulas. Because once you have got your life into the right balance, you are going to sail ahead.

Balance Benefits:

✓ More physical energy

✓ Ability to deal with problems

✓ More personal confidence

✓ More enjoyment of everyday life

✓ Rediscovering how to have fun

Five:Two The Golden Balance

Once you start managing your life the Five:Two way, it’s amazing to discover that it is all around us. For many, the first time we meet Five:Two is in the dieting principle, where you eat all you want for five days each week and then fast for the other two days. You’ll soon discover that it extends far beyond diet, and can provide solutions to so many of our day-to-day worries.

For your health

There’s much more to the principle than only how we eat. It’s there in the way most of us divide our week up into five days work and two days rest. Our health also seems to fall naturally into this pattern. Guidelines recommend two hours of exercise every five days. Health experts want us to balance drinking wine or spirits by having five small glasses of water or a soft drink for every two small glasses of alcohol.

For your well-being

We know it works for physical health and fitness, and now it’s even beginning to look as if Five:Two is the mind’s instinctive way of healing itself. Studies are researching what happens when people go through terrible life events like war, accidents and abuse. People who have experienced these often suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS), where they are unable to move on, leading to depression and other illnesses. By comparing those who do cope successfully with those who don’t, psychologists have discovered that if we allow our mind to keep revisiting events little by little, in a Five:Two pattern, we can reduce the risk of PTSS.

For family and relationships

When it comes to our family life, counsellors are finding that just two periods of quality time together can mend the problems that arise over the five days of the school or working week. Couples forced into long-distance relationships say the same thing – just two long phone calls or e-chats every five days makes all the difference.

To beat the years

The good news is that Five:Two works all through your life – and even better as you get older. All you need to do is use two of the Beat the Years formulas every five days and you can improve a host of age-related problems including bone-thinning (osteoporosis); movement and stiffness; mental slowness; loneliness. You can even combat those wrinkles.

The Golden Ratio

The idea of having balance and proportion in life has been believed for a long time. Most of the world’s religions understand that you need to have at least one or two days every week to rest, relax and pray or meditate. The science was added around the time of Leonardo da Vinci, when the Golden Ratio was discovered. Originally used in art and architecture, the idea was that there was a natural proportion for all things, and this would be pleasing and harmonious. Now this book takes that concept into our daily lives, so we can all find a balance that works for us as individuals.

Chunking

Luckily it doesn’t take a genius like da Vinci to understand the idea of putting balance into life. When scientists and researchers talk about ratios and proportions, there’s quite a straightforward way of putting it – Chunking. Our ratio is really simple: five Chunks on one side, balanced with two Chunks on the other. It’s as easy as that. When I first started researching this book I was chatting about Chunking to my old friend Steph (we’ll meet her later), and she said, ‘Well, you’ve always chunked your life!’ She’s right, and I think lots of us do it instinctively, but in a rather random way. With this book we’re going to learn how to use Chunking to take control of troublesome areas of our life.

So what is a Chunk? The short answer is: a Chunk is whatever you want it to be.

Here is a Chunk:

Think of a Chunk as an empty box. You can put whatever you want into that box, and that becomes your Chunk. Here are some examples of Chunks:

So basically a Chunk is an element of your life that needs balancing. For every five Chunks, you will have two balancing Chunks. This book will show you what balancing Chunks you can use, for whatever you want to improve. Just look through Part Two to see the different sections, which deal with the main topics that we sometimes need help with.

How to use Chunks

Perhaps you need to get healthier and fitter? We can use Chunks of exercise to balance the Chunks where you are sitting at your desk, or like me, at a computer screen. Or maybe your relationships are going through a rocky patch? Just go to the relationships section in Part Two and you will find Chunks that can help you rebalance how you share life with your nearest and dearest.

My first Chunks

Steph was right when she pointed out that I am an instinctive Chunker. Back in the day, when she and I used to work together on a national newspaper, we were in a really stressful workplace. I used to Chunk up my working day, and even my life. Steph and I were working very long hours getting out the next day’s paper. Looking back I can see that I had Chunks