Is Intermittent Fasting Actually Good For Weight Loss? Here’s What The Evidence Says By David Clayton, Nottingham Trent University via Natural Blaze
If you’re someone who’s thought about losing weight or has wanted to get healthier in the past few years, you’ve probably come across these two words: intermittent fasting. From celebrities to fitness enthusiasts, intermittent fasting has many thousands of loyal advocates online, claiming this way of eating has helped them lose weight better than other diet methods have.
It’s easy to see the appeal of intermittent fasting as a weight loss method. Not only is it simple, it’s also flexible, can be adapted easily to every person, and doesn’t require you to eliminate foods or count calories. But despite its popularity, intermittent fasting may not actually be better than other diet methods when it comes to weight loss.
To date, numerous studies have shown intermittent fasting is as good as counting calories when it comes to weight loss – including a recent study, which tracked participants for more than a year.
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This has even been shown with many different types of intermittent fasting, including alternate-day fasting (where you fast or restrict calories every other day), 5:2 dieting (eating normally five days a week, then fasting or restricting calories for two days) and time-restricted eating (where you eat all of your days calories within a set time window, such as only eating during an eight hour window, then fasting for 16 hours). But no studies have yet shown intermittent fasting to be any better than conventional diets.
Intermittent fasting reduces the amount you eat, but it may have a downside. It both reduces the amount of physical activity we do, and reduces how hard we push during exercise.
This is true regardless of the type of intermittent fasting you do. This suggests that when calorie intake is substantially reduced – even for a short period of time – the body adapts by reducing the number of calories used during exercise. Researchers aren’t entirely sure why this happens, however.
While this may not necessarily affect weight loss, lower physical activity levels can have other negative effects on health. For example, a recent alternate-day fasting study found that even just three weeks of this diet reduced physical activity levels and led to a greater loss of muscle mass than a daily calorie restriction diet. The fasting diet was also less effective than daily calorie restriction for fat loss.
