A new study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that so-called intermittent fasting may not really be a better way to shed weight than, for example, calorie counting.
During the course of their study, the researchers had a group of 139 individuals with obesity follow a “calorie-restricted diet” for 12 months. At the same time, the patients involved in the study were randomly assigned to either time-restricted eating, i.e. eating only between 8 am and 4 pm, or to “daily calorie restriction alone”.
When the 118 participants eventually completed their “12-month follow-up visit”, the researchers established that changes in weight between the time-restriction and the daily-calorie-restriction groups were “not significantly different”.
“Among patients with obesity, a regimen of time-restricted eating was not more beneficial with regard to reduction in body weight, body fat, or metabolic risk factors than daily calorie restriction”, the study authors concluded.
As the New York Post points out, last year an event planner from Seattle named Kristin White told them how she ended up developing anorexia and orthorexia, though she did lose 15 pounds in six weeks.
“It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, said registered dietician Tammy Beasley, one of the staff at the Alsana residential treatment centre in California that White entered back in 2019 to deal with her eating disorder. “I wish intermittent fasting had a warning stamped on it”.