David Clayton, Nottingham Trent University
If you’re thinking of losing weight or wanting to be healthier in the last few years, you’ve probably come across these two words: intermittent fasting. Thousands of loyal supporters of intermittent fasting, from celebrities to fitness enthusiasts, are online. He claims that this diet helped him lose more weight than other diets.
You can see the appeal of intermittent fasting as a weight loss method. Not only is it simple, it’s flexible, it’s easy to adapt to everyone, and you don’t have to eliminate food or count calories. However, despite its popularity, intermittent fasting may actually be worse than other diets when it comes to weight loss.
To date, many studies have shown that intermittent fasting is as good as counting calories in terms of weight loss – including recent studies that have followed participants for over a year.
This can also be a variety of types of intermittent fasts, such as alternate-day fasts (fasting every other day or calorie restriction), 5: 2 diets (usually eating 5 days a week, then 2 days fasting or calorie restriction). It is shown. ) And a time-limited diet (if you eat all the calories of the day within a set time frame, such as eating only in an 8-hour time frame and then fasting for 16 hours). However, no studies have shown that intermittent fasting is superior to traditional diets.
Intermittent fasting reduces the amount you eat, but it may have drawbacks. It reduces the amount of physical activity we do and how hard we push during exercise.
This is true regardless of the type of intermittent fasting. This suggests that when calorie intake is significantly reduced, the body adapts by reducing the number of calories used during exercise, even for short periods of time. However, researchers are not entirely sure why this happens.
This does not necessarily affect weight loss, but low levels of physical activity can adversely affect your health. For example, a recent alternate-day fasting study found that even just three weeks of this diet reduced physical activity levels, leading to a significant loss of muscle mass over a daily calorie-restricted diet. A fasting diet was also less effective than daily calorie restriction on fat loss.
Muscle mass is very important for many reasons, such as regulating blood sugar levels and maintaining physical fitness as you grow older. Therefore, it is best to avoid diets that cause muscle loss. However, a combination of intermittent fasting and exercise programs such as strength training may help maintain lean muscle mass better while promoting fat loss.
Are there any other benefits to fasting?
Intermittent fasting may not be a miraculous solution when it comes to weight loss, but it does not mean that it may not have other health benefits.
A recent review of intermittent fasting has shown that it improves blood pressure, insulin sensitivity (how effectively the body regulates blood sugar), and lowers cholesterol levels to the same extent as daily calorie restriction.
This effect may be due to weight loss. However, few studies have followed participants for more than a year, so it is difficult to know if these effects will persist.
Some studies also suggest that how fast you may be the key. Many studies show promising results from an early time-limited diet, including eating all the calories of the day early in the day and fasting in the evening, usually after 4 pm. Eating early in the day aligns food intake with our natural circadian rhythm. This means that nutrients are processed more efficiently.
An early time-limited diet has also been shown to improve some markers of health, such as insulin sensitivity, which is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes. These improvements were seen without losing weight.
There is also evidence that the results of a 5: 2 intermittent fasting diet can be improved by placing two very low-calorie or non-calorie diet days in a row. This can lead to greater improvement in insulin sensitivity than is seen when practicing daily calorie restriction.
This may be due to spending more time in a fasted state and increasing the amount of body fat burned. Interestingly, exercising during a fast can also burn fat and improve insulin sensitivity.
Therefore, intermittent fasting may not be better than other diets for weight loss, but changing the way you do it, such as evening fasting, confirms other health benefits. May be useful.
Intermittent fasting is safe and may still be effective for people who are struggling to stick to a calorie-restricted diet. It is also worth noting that it is best to combine intermittent fasting with exercise for best results.
David Clayton, Senior Lecturer of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology, Nottingham Trent University
This article has been republished from Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.
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