What is The 5:2 Diet? The thing most people want to know is what this diet is all about. It's simple, and most generalize it in the following, truncated way. Two non-consecutive days are required to fast. Fasting consists of eating very little, about 600 calories (500 for women) and that's it. The goal is to eat highly nutritional foods, however, and not just 2 candy bars and call it a day. The other 5 days, you can eat a healthy diet. This is not fasting in the traditional sense, and you have to plan out 2 of your 7 days per week. What is The Daniel Fast? There are two references to fasting in the book of Daniel, and that is what the Daniel Fast focuses on for guidelines. In the first reference, Daniel 1, Daniel and his friends drank only water and ate only vegetables for ten days. At the end of their ten days, they appeared healthier than their peers who ate the rich food from the royal table. Then again in Daniel 10, Daniel undergoes another fast and abstains from meat, and wine (peasant food) for a period of twenty-one days.