Fasting is a popular method for losing weight, particularly intermittent fasting. Nutritionist Alexis Supan from the Cleveland Clinic in the USA explains how such time-limited food intake affects health.
What is intermittent fasting?
“Time-restricted eating is probably the most popular type of fasting. “Food intake is limited to a certain time window during the day – people often only eat within an eight-hour window,” explains the expert in a current press release.
Then there is, for example, the so-called periodic fasting, in which you look at the week as a whole and choose one or more days on which you don’t eat any calories at all or make sure to only eat low-calorie food with around 500 calories take.
Health Benefits of Fasting?
According to Supan, none of the fasting methods mentioned have any guaranteed health benefits. While it’s possible that intermittent fasting reduces insulin resistance, research on its overall health benefits remains conflicting, the nutritionist said.
However, fasting can help you stick to a regular meal plan and avoid snacking in the evening, for example. However, caution remains important when attempting to lose weight through intermittent fasting, Supan emphasizes.
Fasting does not automatically guarantee weight loss and to maintain a healthy diet you still need to pay attention to what you eat. Nevertheless, fasting can make it easier to start a healthier lifestyle.
“Many people like time-restricted eating because it’s a simple rule to follow – there’s not a lot of calculations or stress involved,” adds Supan.
Inform about possible risks
However, the nutritionist strongly recommends that you first seek information about possible personal risks from a doctor or nutritional advice before simply starting intermittent fasting on your own.
Intermittent fasting can have dangerous effects on certain diseases such as diabetes. However, there are also studies here that tend to see benefits of intermittent fasting for diabetes.
A study published in the English-language journal “JAMA Network Open” showed that participants who restricted their food intake for six months were able to significantly reduce their body weight compared to the control group.
In addition, the time-restricted food intake reduced the so-called hemoglobin A1c value (HbA1c) and the researchers concluded that intermittent fasting could be an effective alternative strategy for reducing body weight and HbA1c values in type 2 diabetes.
Eating disorder caused by fasting?
However, the team also points out that the effect of time-restricted food intake remains controversial to this day and that studies, for example, have also shown a possible connection between the risk of eating disorders and intermittent fasting.
Overall, further research seems urgently warranted in order to shed more light on the benefits and risks of intermittent fasting and to be able to make recommendations for its use. In particular, the long-term risk of developing eating disorders should be taken into account. (as)
