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The five factor diet is one of the most popular recent celebrity diets to hit the market. Brought to the world by personal trainer and fitness expert to the stars, Harley Pasternak, the five factor diet is intended to fit around a hectic and busy lifestyle, making it easy to lose weight, eat healthily, exercise and feel great. Harley Pasternak has a number of celebrity clients, and many of Hollywood's biggest stars have reported having used the five factor diet to great effect, including Kanye West, John Mayer, Alicia Keys and Halle Berry. Harley Pasternak has since appeared on television as a nutrition and fitness expert on such shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show, America's Next Top Model and The Tyra Banks Show, and his book, 'The Five Factor Diet', made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2006.

The five factor diet was originally created for celebrities and based on their 'on-set' lifestyles. Harley was tasked with creating a diet that combined a brief, effective exercise regime, that could be carried out at home (without a great deal of gym equipment) or in the short breaks in between scenes on movie sets, with a range of healthy meals, which were quick to prepare and used few ingredients. The five factor diet was borne out of this desire to have a quick-fire diet that could be followed easily without either the diet or exercise regime impacting too much on daily life. The diet plan is simple - it involves having five small meals a day, with each meal including five key elements: a lean protein, a complex carbohydrate, fiber, a 'good fat' and a sugar free drink. Each meal can be made in a few minutes, as they contain simple, easy to prepare ingredients. These meals are coupled with brief, 25-minute workouts, which are carried out daily. Users of the five factor diet are reported to lose around 10lbs in five weeks (but dieters with a lot of weight to lose will need to stay on the diet plan for a great deal longer than five weeks in order to reach their target weight).

Whilst we can see the draw of a diet such as the five factor diet, in that the rules are simple to follow and the meals are easy to produce, we can't help but think that the diet is a little gimmicky. With such a great focus on all of the '5' rules, and the constant celebrity name-dropping, it would be easy to think that this diet is a little inaccessible for a regular home-dieter. Similarly, whilst the website does offer a range of potentially useful features (such as a shopping list, weight tracker, meal planner, eating out guide and more), we simply think that eating five meals a day (following such specific rules) is unlikely to be easy to follow for a regular individual (a mother with children, for example). It's certainly difficult to translate the principles from this diet into a diet that could be followed alongside regular family meals. Equally, we think the rules in this diet are likely to appeal to those who (like many of the celebrity names included on the website) have a personal trainer to guide them, and can afford to pay for the meal delivery service that can accompany the diet, as this undoubtedly makes the diet easier to follow. We were certainly a little disappointed that the site doesn't offer more in the way of community features, which could support followers of the diet who don't have access to a personal trainer.

In short, if you don't have much weight to lose, you could find this diet a great alternative to more flexible diets that you may have tried in the past. If, however, you're looking at this diet as an option for a lifestyle change, we would recommend trying other diets which may not only provide better results, but could also be easily translated into everyday life.