@purl2, I thought I would start a new conversation on this. The 5:2 diet is a very simple idea - you eat normally 5 days each week and restrict your calorie intact to 500 cals (for a woman, I think a bit more for a man). The 5:2 diet is a big thing in the UK - lots of my friends are on it or have tried it. I have wanted to try it but have never dared because my MS has made me thin and I am scared that getting any thinner would be bad for me. Anyway, back to the 5:2 diet: it was invented by Michael Moseley. There's been a lot of work in very reputable institutions in the US about the health benefits of restricting your calorie intake but it's hard to do weeks or months of restriction and Michael Moseley came up with an easier way to get the same benefits. You can watch the programme that he made about the basis of the diet and its benefits here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMF7hHTQxQ I already posted a link to the benefits for MS of intermittent fasting, but for completeness, I'll put it up again: http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.com/2016/05/clinicspeak-intermittent-fasting.html The benefits come from the calorie restriction and part of the point is that you don't have to follow any particular diet on the 5 days when you are not fasting. Incidentally, I do have a bit of a problem with the so-called Palaeolithic diet. Palaeolithic people ate a very varied diet, seasonal fruit and veg, insects, lots of fish and seafood and, occasionally (when they could catch it), lean meat. They didn't follow a diet anything like the Palaeolithic diet.