Fasting is a nutritional practice as old as life itself. Since time immemorial it has been part of many cultures, and is still practiced today. A good example is the case of Ramadan, where religious reasons come into play. However, the use of fasting has gone to the next level. Used therapeutically, intermittent fasting has been postulated as a healthy diet with some notoriety in recent years. One of its main advantages is the help in weight loss. It looks like a drawer, doesn't it? If you don't eat, you lose weight. But it is not as easy as it seems, since the time restriction of meals raises some important questions for the scientific community. In fact, it is not entirely clear that intermittent fasting works for everyone.
As with all promising diets, a lot of people freak out excessively with intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting gurus abound online like an Egyptian plague at its best. How can we protect ourselves against them? Is it possible to distinguish the benefits of intermittent fasting without getting too high? To try to achieve this, we are going to analyze a recent scientific study that has yielded very interesting conclusions on this edible subject.
What is intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting consists of a restriction of the hours that we can use to eat throughout the day. There are different types of intermittent fasting, depending on the number of hours we spend without eating. However, the most common variant is the 16/8 fast due to its simplicity and greater ease for beginners. Basically, it consists of fasting for 16 hours – many of them coincide with our sleeping hours – and eating only in a band of 8 hours a day. This period usually involves skipping breakfast or dinner, at least at the times typically established.
For the rest, intermittent fasting does not imply great food antics: it simply restricts the time in which you can eat. For example, if we have taken our last meal at 10:00 p.m. at night and do not eat anything until 2:00 p.m. the next day, then we would already have it. How many times have you done intermittent fasting without realizing it? Surely in your time of university madness, more than once. Well, no. The calories of the drinks also count, and they are not exactly few.
For the rest, the practice of intermittent fasting has been powerfully extolled thanks to its potential health benefits, such as better control of insulin and glucose spikes in the body. It is also theorized about the prevention of cardiovascular diseases by successfully regulating blood pressure and other metabolic parameters, such as lower total cholesterol and greater presence of “good” cholesterol or LDL lipoproteins.
Does intermittent fasting help you lose weight?
Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash The University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans has published an interesting piece of research in the New England Journal of Medicine. In it, the researchers wanted to contrast the benefits of intermittent fasting for a whole year. To do this, 139 patients with obesity divided into two groups were subjected to a randomized clinical trial. One of the groups with caloric restriction and time to eat: they could only eat food between 8 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, while the other group only had caloric restriction and no time limitation. The imposed diet for all participants was 1,500-1,800 kcal per day for men and 1,200-1,500 kcal per day for women.
These are the bases of randomized clinical trials: scientific studies of a certain quality that allow a variable to be analyzed by isolating it in one group while the other remains on the sidelines —it is what is known as a control group. Once this method has been established, subjects with very similar conditions (weight, height or age) are chosen and assigned completely randomly to one of the two groups. This is how scientific magic is done, being able to obtain research that goes beyond observational studies and that provides us with greater evidence or reliability in terms of its results.
Generally speaking, intermittent fasting is not better than a low-calorie diet for weight loss. Be careful, because it is not worse
And what conclusions does the study throw? Well, in general terms, intermittent fasting is not better than a low-calorie diet to lose weight. Eye, because it is not worse either. The results show this, since the study participants who followed intermittent fasting lost an average of 8 kilograms, while those who only followed a low-calorie diet had a loss of 6.3 kilograms. Despite the difference, statistically significant differences are not considered for a period of 12 months. Other parameters such as BMI, body fat, waist circumference, or blood pressure were also reduced, in line with weight loss but without representing large changes.
The study authors themselves are blunt in interpreting the results: “In this 12-month trial, we found that the 8-hour time-restricted feeding regimen did not result in greater weight loss than the daily caloric restriction regimen, and both regimens resulted in similar caloric deficits”
Limitations of the study on this practice
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash Despite the data obtained, the truth is that the study has some limitations that we must take into account. It is important to always mention it, since there are no perfect scientific investigations: it is impossible to have all the parameters and variables that can affect our hypothesis under control.
In this way, only people belonging to the general population, without additional diseases, were included in the study. There is no way to verify from this particular study whether intermittent fasting could benefit people with diabetes or cardiovascular disease, for example, as has been theorized in the past.
On the other hand, the researchers did not take into account the physical exercise performed by the participants: this is one of the great variables that was left out, probably the most important. We cannot associate weight loss solely with diet, but physical exercise must come into play, a metric that can vary considerably from person to person.
So, as always, a single scientific study does not provide the whole truth on a subject. Even so, it is interesting to put all its strengths and also its negative points in context in order to build evidence-based health recommendations. In this way, we can conclude that intermittent fasting is an interesting tool for weight loss that has been used by nutrition professionals for many years. However, it does not seem to be suitable for everyone. Do they promise to lose weight with her yes or yes? So it is a complete hoax. If someone does, run away as far as you can.
