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Tag Archives: fasting
Intermittent fasting and calorie counting about equal for weight loss, according to new study – Salon
- Intermittent fasting and calorie counting about equal for weight loss, according to new study Salon
- Intermittent fasting and calorie-counting give similar weight-loss results, study finds. The best diet is the one you can stick to, experts say. Yahoo Life
- Once again, eating less, less often shown to help people manage their weight Boing Boing
- Intermittent fasting is as effective as calorie counting for weight loss, study finds KPRC Click2Houston
- Daytime-restricted feeding enhances running endurance without prior exercise in mice Nature.com
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Intermittent Fasting May Not Affect Your Chances of Weight Loss, Study Suggests
New research casts doubt on certain claimed benefits of intermittent fasting, finding no link between a person’s timing of meals and their chances of long-term weight loss. The frequency and size of people’s meals, however, was linked to modest changes in weight.
Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recruited adult patients from one of three major health care systems to use an app (“Daily 24”) where they would report their sleeping and eating habits for up to six months. These reports were then used as a barometer for people’s routine eating and sleeping behavior. The researchers also kept track of the volunteers’ health outcomes, including weight, before and after the study began through their electronic medical records. About 550 people used the app during the study period, and the researchers were able to track these people’s weight over an average length of six years.
The team found no significant association between the timing of meals and annual changes in weight in their study sample. People who reported skipping breakfast or taking long breaks between meals, for instance, didn’t noticeably lose or gain any more weight on average than those who didn’t do that. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
This type of study is known as observational research, which can only be used to find correlations between two variables, not necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship. And this study in particular wasn’t measuring what might happen to people who newly decide to start intermittent fasting, but rather the possible effects of someone’s regular eating habits on their weight over time. That said, several small trials, including one published last April, have tracked people as they started dieting and have found that intermittent fasting may not provide any added weight loss over a typical eating schedule.
“Based on other studies that have come out, including ours, we are starting to think that timing of meals through the day most likely doesn’t immediately result in weight loss,” lead author Wendy Bennett, an associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins, told CNN.
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Bennett and other researchers studying the topic have cautioned that their results don’t necessarily rule out that intermittent fasting can have some unique positives. It’s possible that some populations, such as those with type 2 diabetes, could experience greater weight loss than they would otherwise while fasting. And for some people, intermittent fasting might simply be easier or preferable as a way to keep track of their eating.
Still, for those who are trying to diet, these findings suggest that there are other patterns they should be more mindful about than timing. The study found that people who ate more frequent medium or large meals during the day gained modest amounts of weight over time (up to two pounds a year linked to every extra meal a day on average). Conversely, eating many small meals throughout the day was linked to a small amount of annual weight loss.
Intermittent fasting may not be as helpful for losing weight as once thought, study finds
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Are snacks before bed your vice? Or do you prefer to wait a few hours after you wake up to eat?
The timing of meals may not have as big an impact on weight as once thought, according to a new study.
The study tracked the portion sizes and eating times of 547 people, in addition to data on their health and weight, over the course of six years. The data showed no association between an interval of the day in which people had their meals and their weight, according to the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Restricting eating times, as seen in diet trends such as intermittent fasting, has been a popular method to try to lose weight in recent years.
But the researchers found no association between restricting eating times and weight loss, said principal investigator of the study Dr. Wendy Bennett, an associate professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. That included how long people ate after waking up, how long their window of eating was throughout the day and how close to going to bed they ate, she noted.
Instead, smaller meals were associated with weight loss, she said.
“Based on other studies that have come out, including ours, we are starting to think that timing of meals through the day most likely doesn’t immediately result in weight loss,” Bennett said, adding the caveat that for some people, timing meals may be a useful tool in tracking nutrition.
The results of this study should be taken with a grain of salt, experts cautioned.
There were few racial and ethnic minorities among the participants, noted Dr. Fatima Cody, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. There are also many social determinants of health, such as stress and people’s environment, that could be added to the data, Cody added.
Those factors could be important for getting a better look at the effects of meal timing, added Alice Lichtenstein, professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University.
“I suspect that if they looked more closely at the data, that there would be subgroups (where timing of meals) may have had a significant effect,” Lichtenstein said.
This study was observational, Bennett noted, meaning that they looked at existing patterns for the study instead of making changes to a randomized group. Further work on this topic is underway, she added.
The big takeaways are that there is no one strategy that works for all people when it comes to nutrition, and that quality of the food counts, Lichtenstein said.
“If you make some effort to consume a healthy diet, you make some effort to be physically active, you’re less likely to have diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension,” Lichtenstein said.
It’s the boring stuff no one wants to hear, she added, but there is no getting around eating fruits and vegetables and getting physical activity when it comes to weight management.
For some people, trying intermittent fasting or restricting eating intervals can be a helpful way to take note of personal tendencies, but many people can’t sustain it for enough time to see long-term change — or keep off any weight they lose, Lichtenstein added.
Cody, who is an obesity medicine physician at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, doesn’t like to focus too strongly on either calorie restriction or intermittent fasting, she said. Instead, she wants her clients to look at the nutritional value of the food they are eating.
To the body, 100 calories of gummy bears is not the same as 100 calories of oatmeal with fruit and nuts, she added.
But different approaches work better in different lifestyles, and everyone should work with their own doctor and their own body without stress and shame, Cody said.
If a nutrition strategy works for someone else, she said, “it just means someone’s body responded and the other one didn’t. It doesn’t mean you’re flawed. It just means that’s just not what your body needed.”
Intermittent fasting a deadly diet? Restricted eating raises risk of early death
PHILADELPHIA — For many people, there’s a constant, nagging inner monologue telling them to start a new diet or get back in the gym. However, some dieting and fitness plans may be doing more harm than good. Whether it’s intermittent fasting, cutting carbs, or going Keto, new research is advising caution for those who restrict their eating habits. Researchers say that eating only one meal per day is associated with an increased risk of death in American adults 40 and older.
According to the international team, skipping meals can have harmful effects to your health. While you might enjoy dropping a few extra pounds, skipping breakfast is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease mortality. Similarly, missing lunch or dinner can lead to a higher risk of death in general.
The timing of your meals also plays role in health. For those who eat three meals daily, researchers say that meals should be spaced out by 4.5 hours of each other. Otherwise, you may be inching closer to death’s door.
“At a time when intermittent fasting is widely touted as a solution for weight loss, metabolic health, and disease prevention, our study is important for the large segment of American adults who eat fewer than three meals each day. Our research revealed that individuals eating only one meal a day are more likely to die than those who had more daily meals,” says lead study author Yangbo Sun in a media release.
2 in 5 people follow a restricted diet plan
The investigators analyzed responses and causes of death from over 24,000 American adults 40 years-old and older who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2014. The survey collects data on everything from diet to general health across the U.S.
Researchers found that people who ate less than three meals a day (about 40% of the participants) shared common characteristics such as having less education, lower income, food insecurities, drinking more alcohol, smoking, and have less energy intake overall.
“Our results are significant even after adjustments for dietary and lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol use, physical activity levels, energy intake, and diet quality) and food insecurity,” adds the study’s senior investigator, Wei Bao.
Dr. Bao explains that skipping meals means obtaining more energy all at once, which can throw off your body’s ability to metabolize glucose. This can result in damage to your metabolism.
So, the next time you’re considering hopping on the newest diet trend, think twice. Limiting your body’s food (and fuel) intake can have serious long-term consequences and that is more important than fitting into the next size down in jeans.
The study is published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Can Intermittent Fasting Help Combat Youth Obesity?
Parents and doctors are looking for new strategies to help adolescents with obesity. One controversial approach drawing the interest of some families is intermittent fasting, which limits people to eating for just a part of the day or week.
Intermittent fasting has gained traction among adults who use it to try to manage weight and improve health. Doctors have largely avoided trying it with adolescents out of concern that introducing a fasting period to their schedules might result in nutritional gaps or trigger eating disorders when teens are rapidly growing and developing.
Now, a small number of doctors and researchers are evaluating types of intermittent fasting in adolescents, searching for solutions as rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes rise. One pediatric endocrinologist in Los Angeles is launching a clinical trial looking at eating within a set time window in adolescents with obesity. Researchers in Australia are completing a separate trial, the results of which they expect to publish later this year.
Roughly one-fifth of children in the U.S. are considered obese, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pediatricians are so concerned that the American Academy of Pediatrics for the first time this month recommended physicians offer weight-loss drugs for children with obesity.
Any approach that limits when and how an adolescent eats must be handled cautiously, doctors say.
Families and doctors need to be very careful with any form of intermittent fasting in youth as it can be a slippery slope with a potential risk of eating disorders, says
Jason Nagata,
a pediatrician and eating-disorder specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Doctors have also raised questions about the potential long-term effects of intermittent fasting on developing bodies.
Courtney Peterson,
an associate professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies intermittent fasting in adults, says she would be worried about adolescents’ getting enough nutrients. “I think it’s worth testing but testing with caution,” she says.
Her research has found that adults with obesity who ate between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. lost on average an extra 5 pounds more than a control group eating over 12 hours or more, and adults with prediabetes who ate over a six-hour period starting early in the day showed improvements in blood-sugar levels.
Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for eating strategies that involve fasting. One such strategy, time-restricted eating, or TRE, limits eating to a set number of hours a day—often eight—with no limitations on what or how much you eat. In the remaining hours, you refrain from eating or drinking except for water.
Alaina Vidmar,
a pediatric endocrinologist and obesity-medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, is starting a clinical trial to evaluate whether an eight-hour window of eating, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., results in changes in insulin and glucose response for teens with obesity.
The researchers are also looking at weight loss and body-fat mass, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol.
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The research stems from conversations Dr. Vidmar had with families of patients with obesity in recent years. Some had asked her about time-restricted eating, or had tried it and said they liked it. She tested the concept in teenagers with obesity to see if setting an eight-hour window of eating was feasible in a pilot study published in the journal Nutrients in 2021.
“They enjoyed doing it, they felt like their whole family could do it, and over time they were losing weight,” Dr. Vidmar says of the teens.
Now, her lab is enrolling 100 youth between 12 and 21 years old with Type 2 diabetes and obesity in a 12-week trial. Participants are screened and monitored for any negative eating behaviors, she says. So far, she hasn’t found that time-limited eating “impacts eating behaviors or worsens disordered eating in any way,” she says.
In Australia, researchers are studying how teens with obesity respond to a different form of fasting called intermittent energy restriction.
In this approach, for three days a week you eat roughly one-quarter of the calories you normally do, says
Natalie Lister,
a researcher and dietitian at the University of Sydney. On the other four days, you have no calorie limits.
Dr. Lister says she and colleagues started looking into intermittent fasting in adolescents with obesity a few years ago when patients started asking about it. They conducted a pilot trial with 30 adolescents, published in 2019. Now, the researchers are completing a trial whose results they expect to publish later this year.
The health team monitors for eating disorders and depression, and the study doesn’t enroll anyone with a high risk of disordered eating, says Dr. Lister. Dietitians provide guidelines to help ensure participants are meeting nutritional requirements.
In adults with obesity, the data on TRE is mixed when it comes to weight loss, but two systematic reviews of the existing research both found a modest weight-loss benefit overall, says Dr. Peterson. Studies have also found that adults experience improvements in measures such as insulin resistance, reducing blood-glucose levels, particularly when their eating window starts early in the day.
Matthew Muros, a 15-year-old in Carson, Calif., struggles with his weight and prediabetes. Matthew participated in Dr. Vidmar’s pilot studies last year. The first two weeks were challenging, he notes.
“I did feel really hungry. I just kept on drinking water,” he says.
He says it got easier, and when the study was over he decided to stick with the schedule. He has lost about 30 pounds, and his blood-glucose levels have improved.
He has also changed his diet, having less soda, fast food and carbohydrates. “I’m trying to eat a little bit more healthy,” he says.
Write to Sumathi Reddy at Sumathi.Reddy@wsj.com
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Intermittent Fasting Might Not Be As Safe as We Thought
Intermittent fasting is a popular dietary trend that involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting. It is believed to have various health benefits such as weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, and reduced inflammation.
The popular dietary trend has been linked to dangerous eating disorder attitudes and behaviors among adolescents and young adults.
A recent study published in the journal Eating Behaviors has shed light on the potential negative effects of intermittent fasting, a popular dietary trend in which people abstain from eating for more than 8 hours at a time. Although intermittent fasting is often promoted as a way to improve health and control or lose weight, few studies have examined its potential risks.
According to the study which analyzed data from over 2,700 adolescents and young adults in Canada, intermittent fasting was found to be linked to disordered eating behaviors in women, including binge eating and compensatory behaviors such as vomiting and compulsive exercise. Men who practiced intermittent fasting were also more likely to report compulsive exercise.
The prevalence of intermittent fasting behaviors among adolescents and young adults was notable. In total, 47% of women, 38% of men, and 52% of transgender or gender non-conforming individuals reported engaging in intermittent fasting in the past 12 months.
“Given our findings, it is problematic how prevalent intermittent fasting was in our sample,” says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, Ph.D., MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.
In all three groups, participants reported an average of 100 days where they engaged in intermittent fasting over the past 12 months.
“The associations found between intermittent fasting and eating disorder behaviors are particularly salient, given the significant increase in eating disorders among adolescents and young adults since the start of the
Intermittent fasting can reverse type 2 diabetes in in MONTHS
Intermittent fasting can reverse type 2 diabetes in half of patients within three MONTHS, study finds
- Diet involved eating 840 calories for five days, then 10 days of eating normally
- Study found 33% managed to reverse condition and remain free of it a year later
- Experts caution study was very small – involving just 36 people – and quite short
Fasting for five days at a time could help some people reverse type 2 diabetes, a study suggests.
It is increasingly fashionable to try the 5:2 diet, fast on alternate days or eat within an eight-hour window each day to lose weight.
Now another type of fasting diet appears to overcome type 2 diabetes, based on the results from a small Chinese study.
The strict regime involved five days of eating only around 840 calories a day, followed by 10 days of eating normally.
Fasting for five days at a time could help some people reverse type 2 diabetes, a study suggests (stock)
The foods on offer for each meal during the fasting period, which required only boiling water to be added, included ‘nutritional rice’, a meal-replacement biscuit containing black beans, maize and oats, and fruit and vegetable gruel.
Among 36 people on this diet for three months, almost half managed to reverse type 2 diabetes and remain free of it a year later.
The study was extremely small and it is important to follow the participants up for more years, as high blood sugar can often return.
But the results add to evidence from a trial led by the University of Newcastle in the UK, which found almost half of people on an extremely low-calorie diet of soups and shakes could drop their blood sugar to a level where they were no longer considered diabetic.
This approach, which has been piloted by NHS England, is planned to be rolled out nationwide.
Dr Dongbo Liu, senior author of the study from Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha, China, said: ‘Diabetes remission is possible if patients lose weight by changing their diet and exercise habits.’
Commenting on the results, Dr Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior lecturer at Aston University, said: ‘Although there have been studies to show low-calorie diets and low-carbohydrate diets can help people with type 2 diabetes achieve remission, this relatively small study is the first to show the use of intermittent fasting.’
But he said it was impossible to say if fasting, rather than simple weight loss, was responsible for putting type 2 diabetes into remission, adding: ‘There is no one best dietary approach to manage type 2 diabetes or bring about remission – it is the diet that is most suitable for that individual living with type 2 diabetes.’
Around 3.7 million people in the UK are known to have a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and an unhealthy diet.
The Chinese study recruited people who had lived with the condition for one to 11 years, and who were aged 38 to 72.
Half tried the intermittent fasting diet over three months, while the others ate normally.
The 36 people who fasted lost an average of almost 6kg (13 pounds), while the others 36 lost only 0.27kg (0.6 pounds) in average.
Three months after completing the diet, 17 out of 36 people who fasted had reversed their type 2 diabetes, compared to only one out of the 36 who ate their usual diet.
A year after completing the diet, 16 out of 36 out of the people on the fasting diet – 44 percent – were still in remission from type 2 diabetes.
Remission, the medical word for reversing diabetes, was defined as having an average blood sugar level of less than 6.5 per cent at least one year after stopping diabetes medication, according to the study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
People with type 2 diabetes who are thinking about changing their diet or wonder if they might be able to put their diabetes into remission should speak to a health professional to discuss the potential effects on their medication.
Supporters of intermittent fasting say it is simpler than calorie-counting, so may work better to lose weight.
Skipping Meals, Fasting and Eating Meals Too Closely Together May Be Linked to Increased Mortality Risk
Summary: A new study links daily eating to mortality risk. Those over 40 who eat one meal a day have a higher mortality risk. Those who skip breakfast are at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease-associated death, and those who eat meals less than 4.5 hours apart have increased mortality risks.
Source: Elsevier
Eating only one meal per day is associated with an increased risk of mortality in American adults 40 years old and older, according to a new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Skipping breakfast is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and missing lunch or dinner with all-cause mortality.
Even among individuals who eat three meals daily, eating two adjacent meals less than or equal to 4.5 hours apart is associated with a higher all-cause death risk.
“At a time when intermittent fasting is widely touted as a solution for weight loss, metabolic health, and disease prevention, our study is important for the large segment of American adults who eat fewer than three meals each day. Our research revealed that individuals eating only one meal a day are more likely to die than those who had more daily meals.
Among them, participants who skip breakfast are more likely to develop fatal cardiovascular diseases, while those who skip lunch or dinner increase their risk of death from all causes,” noted lead author Yangbo Sun, MBBS, Ph.D., Department of Preventive Medicine, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. TN, U.S.. “Based on these findings, we recommend eating at least two to three meals spread throughout the day.”
The investigators analyzed data from a cohort of more than 24,000 American adults 40 years old and older who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2014. An ongoing, nationally representative health survey of the non-institutionalized US population, NHANES collects a wide range of health-related data to assess diet, nutritional status, general health, disease history, and health behaviors every two years.
Mortality status and cause of the 4,175 deaths identified among this group were ascertained from the NHANES Public-use Linked Mortality File. The investigators observed a number of common characteristics among participants eating fewer than three meals per day (around 40% of respondents)—they are more likely to be younger, male, non-Hispanic Black, have less education and lower family income, smoke, drink more alcohol, be food insecure, and eat less nutritious food, more snacks, and less energy intake overall.
“Our results are significant even after adjustments for dietary and lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol use, physical activity levels, energy intake, and diet quality) and food insecurity,” said the study’s senior investigator Wei Bao, MD, Ph.D., Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, U.S.. He noted, “Our findings are based on observations drawn from public data and do not imply causality. Nonetheless, what we observed makes metabolic sense.”
Dr. Bao explained that skipping meals usually means ingesting a larger energy load at one time, which can aggravate the burden of glucose metabolism regulation and lead to subsequent metabolic deterioration. This can also explain the association between a shorter meal interval and mortality, as a shorter time between meals would result in a larger energy load in the given period.
Dr. Bao commented, “Our research contributes much-needed evidence about the association between eating behaviors and mortality in the context of meal timing and duration of the daily prandial period.”
Meal frequency, skipping, and intervals were not addressed by the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans because the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee “was unable to find sufficient evidence on which to summarize the evidence between frequency of eating and health.”
Previous dietary studies and Dietary Guidelines for Americans have focused mainly on dietary components and food combinations.
About this diet research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Elsevier
Contact: Press Office – Elsevier
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Meal Skipping and Shorter Meal Intervals Are Associated with Increased Risk of All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality among US Adults” by Yangbo Sun et al. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Abstract
Meal Skipping and Shorter Meal Intervals Are Associated with Increased Risk of All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality among US Adults
See also
Background
Previous dietary studies and current dietary guidelines have mainly focused on dietary intake and food patterns. Little is known about the association between eating behaviors such as meal frequency, skipping and intervals, and mortality.
Objective
The objective was to examine the associations of meal frequency, skipping, and intervals with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality.
Design
This was a prospective study.
Participants/setting
A total of 24,011 adults (aged ≥40 years) who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2014 were included in this study. Eating behaviors were assessed using 24-hour recall. Death and underlying causes of death were ascertained by linkage to death records through December 31, 2015.
Main outcome measures
The outcomes were all-cause and CVD mortality.
Statistical analyses performed
Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of all-cause and CVD mortality.
Results
During 185,398 person-years of follow-up period, 4,175 deaths occurred, including 878 cardiovascular deaths. Most participants ate three meals per day. Compared with participants eating three meals per day, the multivariable-adjusted HRs for participants eating one meal per day were 1.30 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.64) for all-cause mortality, and 1.83 (95% CI 1.26 to 2.65) for CVD mortality. Participants who skipped breakfast have multivariable-adjusted HRs 1.40 (95% CI 1.09 to 1.78) for CVD mortality compared with those who did not. The multivariable-adjusted HRs for all-cause mortality were 1.12 (95% CI 1.01 to 1.24) for skipping lunch and 1.16 (95% CI 1.02 to 1.32) for skipping dinner compared with those who did not. Among participants eating three meals per day, the multivariable-adjusted HR for participants with an average interval of ≤4.5 hours in two adjacent meals was 1.17 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.32) for all-cause mortality, comparing with those having a meal interval of 4.6 to 5.5 hours.
Conclusions
In this large, prospective study of US adults aged 40 years or older, eating one meal per day was associated with an increased risk of all-cause and CVD mortality. Skipping breakfast was associated with increased risk of CVD mortality, whereas skipping lunch or dinner was associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality. Among participant with three meals per day, a meal interval of ≤4.5 hours in two adjacent meals was associated with higher all-cause mortality.
Four possible benefits of fasting, according to science
When people want to lose weight, the potential benefits of fasting can seem very appealing, because only having a certain window to eat means you potentially consume fewer calories.
But what is fasting? According to registered dietitian Marcela Fiuza (opens in new tab), a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association (opens in new tab), fasting means consuming no calories in a certain time frame. It can be ‘intermittent’, meaning you switch between eating and fasting, or ‘prolonged’, which generally means fasting from two days onwards.
“Intermittent fasting, in particular time-restricted eating like the 5:2 or 16:8, has become popular in recent years,” she adds. “It involves eating within a time-restricted window each day, usually eight to ten hours.”
As well as weight loss, lots of people do fasting purely for the potential benefits, including better gut and heart health as well as lower blood pressure. But it’s important to note that fasting doesn’t guarantee these results, and it’s not suitable for everyone — particularly anyone with disordered eating, pregnant women, diabetics, seniors and children.
In this article we talk more to Fiuza about the potential benefits of fasting, and take a look at some of the cons too.
What does fasting do to the body?
Before we look at the potential benefits of fasting, it’s important to know what it actually does to the body.
Fiuza explains: “During fasting the body makes a number of metabolic adaptations to keep functioning optimally in the absence of external fuel (food). In the first few hours of fasting, the body resorts to its glycogen stores for energy. Once these are depleted, there is a metabolic switch, in which the body starts breaking down fatty acids into ketones that are then used as a source of energy.
Marcela Fiuza is an award-winning registered dietitian based in London, U.K. She has a decade of experience working in the National Health Service, private practice, and the commercial sector. She holds an MSc in Nutrition and a Postgraduate Diploma in Dietetics from King’s College London. She is a member and media spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association.
“The timing for this metabolic switch depends on what your last meal was, how much energy you use and the amount of glycogen stored in your liver. On average it can take 12-26 hours without food.”
Of course, not all benefits are guaranteed. “Plenty of studies, mainly in animal models, suggest benefits from being in a fasted state, and there is increasing evidence emerging from human trials, too,” says Fiuza.
“But more research is needed until we can fully understand the long-term impacts of fasting in human health.”
1. Autophagy
One of the possible benefits of fasting is that it can trigger a process called autophagy — your body’s cellular recycling system. Acting as a sort of quality control for your cells, autophagy allows the body to break down and reuse old cell parts so they can work more efficiently.
Put simply, it’s the body’s way of housekeeping and getting rid of mutated cells that could develop into cancer or neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, according to a study in the EMBO journal (opens in new tab).
The process of autophagy begins after a period of fasting and could be an evolutionary throwback to our hunter-gatherer days, where people would go longer without eating due to the labor-intensive nature of finding food.
Researchers are studying autophagy’s role in potentially preventing and fighting disease, says Fiuza. “Evidence from a study published in Science Direct (opens in new tab) suggests that fasting may be able to enhance autophagy.” Another study, published in Autophagy Journal (opens in new tab), revealed that regular fasting could ‘reset’ the body and help it run more efficiently by clearing out cellular debris.
2. Improved gut health
There is evidence (opens in new tab) to suggest that a radical change in diet, such as fasting, could alter the gut’s microbial make-up and change what gut bacteria is doing.
Fiuza told Live Science: ”Some forms of fasting may be beneficial to the gut microbiome, which has been linked to a range of health benefits from improved metabolic health, reduced risk of cancer, heart disease and obesity.”
Other research found that alternate-day fasting (24 hours of eating normally followed by 24 hours of fasting) promoted ‘bacterial clearance’ that could support the health of the gut microbiome.
3. Healthy heart and blood sugar levels
Fasting may also improve the body’s response to the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels. When your blood sugars are regulated it reduces the risk of weight gain and diabetes, which are two risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other heart-related health problems.
Fiuza adds that intermittent fasting could also improve heart health by reducing low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad, cholesterol as well as “exerting positive effects on blood pressure regulation and by reducing inflammation”, but more research is still needed in this area.
4. Weight loss
Fasting has gained in popularity as many people see it as a way to lose weight. “It can potentially help some people to lose weight in the short term,” admits Fiuza. “Although it doesn’t appear to be superior to other types of calorie-restricted diets for this purpose.” And ultimately to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit.
A systematic review in peer-reviewed journal Canadian Family Physician (opens in new tab) found that in all 27 trials examined, intermittent fasting resulted in weight loss, ranging from 0.8% to 13.0% of baseline body weight.
But as with all extreme eating plans, there are some cons to consider, says Fiuza.
“There are potential side effects to fasting, but most usually subside over time. The main ones are lethargy, irritability and headaches, but there is also a risk of disordered eating for those with a predisposition to eating disorders.
“Prolonged fasting is much more intense than intermittent fasting and anyone considering it should speak to their healthcare professional beforehand. Intermittent fasting may also not be appropriate for everyone.
“People who are pregnant or have type 1 diabetes, suffer from an eating disorder or take medicines with food, as well as children and older adults, should avoid fasting.”
If fasting doesn’t sound appealing, check out our guide to the Mediterranean diet instead.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.