Intermittent Fasting: No Evidence of Enhanced Weight Loss

I recently wrote about why—theoretically—intermittent fasting (or alternate day fasting) actually has little likelihood of enhancing weight loss, over other forms of calorie restriction. (See: Alternate Day & Intermittent Fasting: Magic for Weight Loss or Just Another Fad?)

Today’s blog assesses the research that has specifically compared any kind of fasting regime (intermittent-calorie-restriction) to the typical dieting approach (constant-calorie-restriction) on weight loss.

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Alternate Day & Intermittent Fasting—Magic for Weight Loss or Just Another Fad?

There has been an explosion of diet books (The Fast Diet, The 5:2 Diet, The 8-Hour Diet, etc.) suggesting that manipulating the time frames you (allow yourself to) eat within can create metabolic-magic leading to easier and/or greater success with weight loss.

There are multiple possible time frame variances among these protocols, including:
a) limiting eating to the same 8-hours daily,
b) an alternating pattern of under- and over-eating days,
c) having two fasting days per week and eating normally the other 5 days,
d) having regular splurge days (in the middle of stretches of calorie restriction), and on and on.

Some authors even suggest you can splurge and eat as much as you want of whatever you want, on the non-fasting days and still lose weight. That’s the kind of promise that causes diet books to fly off shelves!

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