The Low-Down on Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting for weight loss has been a popular diet plan in the last 8-9 years, but what is the current research really saying about the diet plans effectiveness?

Intermittent fasting comes in several different plans, there are 3 main types:

5:2 Diet- allowing you to eat whatever you please for a certain amount of days a week and stay under 500-700 calories on the remaining days.
Alternate Day Fasting: rotate one day of feasting with one day of an extreme calorie restriction, which tends to be about 25% of your energy needs.
Time-Restricted: only eating within certain hours of the day, for example 10am-4pm.

The proposed benefits of intermittent fasting include:

Promoting weight loss
Make cells more resistant to stress and inflammation
Boost brain health
Protect against chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes

The truth is, researchers don't really know exactly how intermittent fasting affects health. Most of the studies showing the proposed benefits that are sited in social media and the news are done on animals, not humans.

The studies that are conducted on humans have very mixed results, especially with poor study conditions such as different types of intermittent fasting, no control groups, and small sample sizes, which can all lead to unreliable results.

One study found that fasting diets did help with the body's ability to use insulin and metabolize glucose, but they were no more effective than low-calorie diets at lowering LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

Another study on weight lost found that some people lost weight and others did not. Generally there was about a 2 pound average of weight loss, however 65% of that was muscle weight loss. That is a much, much larger percentage than other diets and often actually causes more weight gain in the future because muscle is a major player in burning excess glucose, fat, and calories.

The bottom line is, research on intermittent fasting on humans is not conclusive or necessarily supportive of the diet. When you eat is much less important than what you eat.

Instead of focusing on when you are eating, focus on eating whole, nutritious, and less processed foods and getting exercise daily to promote muscle building which will help your overall weight management.

To learn more about intermittent fasting head over to eatingwell.com/intermittentfasting

To read the full article check out Not So Fast by Karen Ansel, M.S., RDN from Eatingwell magazine