What You Need to Know About Intermittent Fasting

In an ever-expanding landscape of wellness gurus and new-age diet plans each boasting incredible claims and “guarantees” among an onslaught of marketing and advertising, it can be incredibly difficult to find the truth. Add in the fact that each of us has our own unique dietary needs and biological differences, and it can be nearly impossible to find a diet plan that works for us.

While some diet plans can be effective for the right person, many dieters continue to struggle to find a plan that works for them, especially in the long term. One such diet plan that is growing in popularity due to its simplicity and ease is called intermittent fasting. But is this plan really effective and how does it compare to other popular diet plans?

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting (IF) involves establishing an eating pattern that shifts between periods of fasting and periods of eating, just as the name suggests. Because intermittent fasting is more focused on when you eat rather than what you eat, it’s a simple approach to dieting and is likely the reason for IF’s growing popularity.

Intermittent fasting can be accomplished in a few different ways. Some opt to fast for entire days as with the 5:2 diet which involves eating as one would normally eat for five days out of the week while restricting their caloric intake to 500 or 600 calories for two consecutive days. Others might choose to fast only during specific times of the day as with the 16:8  or 14:10 method that asks dieters to fast for a long period of the day, 16 or 14 hours, and then restrict their eating to an 8-hour or 10-hour window. Another method involves alternating days where each day alternates between fasting with little to no caloric intake one day and eating without a time-based restriction the next. No matter the format, the same general principle applies: cycling between defined periods of fasting and eating.

What Does the Science Say?

In addition to IF’s simple approach, there’s growing evidence from the scientific community to support the diet plan’s benefits under clinical conditions. A December 2022 article from the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences touted several positive effects of IF on Type 2 Diabetes such as improved metabolism. Nature Medicine also reported good news in March 2023 with clinical trials that concluded IF had a positive effect on glucose metabolism in adults at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Likewise, an August 2022 article published in Cureus showed support for incorporating intermittent fasting in diabetes management plans.

While there’s growing evidence for IF’s benefits for the management of type 2 diabetes, the picture is less clear concerning intermittent fasting’s impact as a weight loss strategy. As recently as 2021, studies published in the Journal of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome and Harvard’s School of Public Health compared different weight loss strategies under clinical conditions and found that no individual strategy was found to be significantly more effective than any other strategy for weight loss. However, each study reported the single most important factor affecting weight loss is maintaining a caloric deficit which simply means taking in fewer calories than one uses for energy in a given day. Which strategy is used to achieve a caloric deficit is entirely up to the individual. 

Next Steps

With so many options and plans available and no single strategy proving to be any more effective than the next, it ought to be encouraged to try a few different strategies, especially if you’re unhappy with your current diet plan, and find the one that works best for you. The key takeaway is finding a strategy that enables manageable caloric deficiencies while maintaining overall good health and well-being.