Will Intermittent Fasting Help Me Lose Weight?

What is it?

Fasting has been practiced for centuries with many different variations and restrictions. Intermittent fasting is the term used to describe an eating pattern that cycles between eating and non-eating. This type of eating pattern focuses only on timings of when food should be consumed, not the types or amounts of food that is eaten. One example of an intermittent fasting regime is the 5:2 diet, that involves eating on 5 days of the week and then fasting for 2 (non-consecutive) days.

The 16/8 method is another popular type of intermittent fasting that involves fasting for 14-16 hours and restricting you’re eating to 8-10 hours per day. For example, your first meal of the day could be 12pm and then you would finish eating around 8pm. The general idea of intermittent fasting is to lower your energy intake, from food, below requirements to lose weight. Although this may seem like a simple concept of energy balance, it can actually be quite complex when other things come into play

The Benefits

Fasting has benefits to weight loss and has shown improvements in chronic disease risk factors. Another suggested benefit of intermittent fasting practices is to gut health, in terms of potentially affecting the composition, function and interaction in the body in a positive way. Improvements in cholesterol levels has also been a proven benefit of intermittent fasting, where the bad cholesterol is lowered and the good is raised.

The Bottom Line

In terms of weight loss, the consensus remains that it is unlikely to be superior to a healthy balanced diet with a standard energy restriction. While intermittent fasting focuses on quantity of food, rather than quality, making small changes to your current diet to resemble a more balanced dietary pattern, rich in fruits and vegetables, will result in improvements in health and weight management. It is more important to focus on the quality of your diet rather than the quantity or the times of eating. Eating more food during restricted times is not going help with weight loss but perhaps even make you put more on. Weight loss is all about energy balance, meaning we want to be burning off more energy than we are taking in as food. But making sure the food that is eaten is part of a healthy balanced diet is also important for numerous health benefits aside from weight management. Intermittent fasting is not a necessary way to lose weight, it is one of many ways, and should be practiced with caution in line with a healthy balanced diet to be proven most successful.