5:2 Diet for Vegetarians

This diet, or eating programme, recommends eating only 500 calories (600 for men) on two days of the week – plus eating normally on the other two days. The second book (Inspiration from around the world) also provides the option of 800 calories.  Both books aim to take people through the first month of undertaking the diet, providing eight days of calorie-counted meals. The meal plans in the books are based on ‘normal’ eating patterns –  breakfast, a light and a main meal plus snacks. In this way dieters can fit in with the rest of the world, and eat when their friends and family do. The book takes away the tedious job of calorie-counting whilst cooking, as the recipes for each day are carefully counted to make sure the target isn’t exceeded.

People might wonder what started me on this new venture of cookery writing. Like many writing projects, it wasn’t in my mind to do this, but when I started the 5:2 diet a few years ago, I found that there were very few proper veggie recipes for the low-calorie days. I found this frustrating. Even when dieting, or perhaps especially when dieting, good tasty food is important. At a writers’ conference, I was sitting with the publisher of www.lusciousbooks.co.uk (a small publishing house which specialises in cookbooks for people using a restricted range of foods), and chatted to her about it. Before I knew it, I was committed to writing the book myself! After the first book was published in 2015, I continued to experiment, and in 2018 the new book was finished which included an 800 calorie fast day option.

As a vegetarian of 40 years plus, I set out to redesign some of my favourite recipes to give the required low-calorie count. I found myself using much-loved recipes from all over the world. The book is useful primarily to people undertaking the 5:2 diet, but as all the meals are calorie-counted, people on other diets will also find the recipes useful. The recipe ideas themselves will help anyone looking to cook tasty vegetarian food.

The books are available as print and ebooks. The print book is available from larger online bookstores. Although the ebook is  Amazon-only, you don’t need a Kindle to access it. On the book’s Amazon page, there is a way to download the book to PC, tablet or mobile.