A new research study has challenged the hype surrounding the greater efficacy of intermittent fasting in shedding more weight.
As per a new scientific review published in Cochrane Library, intermittent fasting is no better than traditional diets when it comes to losing weight and is hardly more effective than doing nothing.
According to researchers’ analysis who assessed data from 22 global studies, people who tried intermittent fasting such as the 5:2 diet popularised by the late Michael Mosley, lost about the same amount of weight as those who followed standard healthy diets.
Compared to doing nothing, intermittent fasting only led to about 3 percent of body weight loss, far below 5 percent that doctors consider meaningful with tangible health benefits.
Dr Luis Garegnani, the lead author and director of the Cochrane Associate Centre at the Italian hospital of Buenos Aires in Argentina said, “Intermittent fasting is not a miracle solution, but it can be one option among several for weight management.”
“Intermittent fasting likely yields results similar to traditional dietary approaches for weight loss. It doesn’t appear clearly better, but it’s not worse either,” she added.
Responding to the findings of study, Dr Zhila Semnani-Azad at the National University of Singapore said, the efficacy of intermittent fasting also depends on the timing as the body’s circadian rhythms are so deeply connected to metabolism.
The study also contains some limitations as the research only looked at results over a maximum of 12 months, so the long-term effects are still unclear. Moreover, the reporting of side effects were also inconsistent across the trials, making it hard to draw a final conclusion.
In recent years, the popularity of intermittent fasting has surged as obesity becomes a widespread global issue. According to WHO, since 1976, worldwide adult obesity has more than tripled.
In this approach, people do fasting for 16 hours followed by an 8-hour eating window.