Intermittent Fasting To Lose Weight: Does It Work? How Do You Do It?

Intermittent fasting has been a buzzword in the weight loss world for quite some time now — and if you, too, are planning to embark on a weight loss adventure, you might be curious about how it works and what its potential benefits are.

The short story is that intermittent fasting can help you shed pounds, but only if you stick to common-sense principles when you do eat, and that it might have some other positive effects on your health. 

Now, let's look at the long story.

What is intermittent fasting, and how do you do it?

This one more or less speaks for itself if you know what the words "intermittent" and "fasting" mean — it obviously involves a planned pattern of abstaining from food and then eating again. Kind of like our (very distant) ancestors did when they ate when they were able to forage or hunt, and went without when they weren't, as proponents sometimes point out. 

You can do this in several different ways.

The Leangains protocol or 16/8 method, in which you don't eat breakfast and fit all of your eating for the day into an eight-hour period (often between noon and 8 pm) is one of the most popular plans, as well as one of the easiest to get used to. A similar approach, early time-restricted feeding, involves the same eight-hour window, except you eat breakfast and all of your other food earlier in the day. 

Some people follow a "5:2" method of intermittent fasting, in which they're on a very low-calorie diet two days a week (not one after the other) but then eat a "normal" amount of calories the rest of the week. Yet others follow an "eat-stop-eat" approach, in which they fast for a full 24-hour period once or twice every week. 

It's not just weight loss: Why people are into intermittent fasting

People practice intermittent fasting to lose weight — and more about that in a bit — but also for its other health benefits. Research on the topic has been piling up, and various studies have found that:

• Intermittent fasting can lower your insulin levels and improve insulin resistance (as found by a study conducted with prediabetics). 
• Intermittent fasting may have the potential to reduce asthma symptoms in overweight asthmatics, one study suggested.
• Intermittent fasting can reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, and improve cognitive function, including better memory and learning, some research has shown. These studies were, however, not carried out on humans but on rodents. 

Intermittent fasting can also help you lose weight

And that's why most people who try it turn to intermittent fasting in the first place. Various intermittent fasting protocols can be effective at helping you drop pounds, research has confirmed. With other potential health benefits very much existing, there's usually no reason not to try if it appeals to you. Intermittent fasting isn't suitable for people who have or had eating disorders, are pregnant or breastfeeding, have diabetes, or are on meds that need to be taken with food. It's also not recommended for adolescents.

For almost everyone else, the practice can be a successful weight loss method. There's a caveat, though — intermittent fasting has been found to be equally good at helping people lose weight as more conventional calorie-restriction weight loss diets, and no better. If you choose this method, you're as likely as someone on a run-of-the-mill "calories in, calories out" diet to lose weight and hopefully reach your goal. You are also as likely to maintain your weight loss after you have reached your goal. But your chances of success aren't higher if you choose intermittent fasting as your weight loss method. 

What's more, some papers tackle the fact that there are folks who think intermittent fasting is a magic pill to the point where they eat to their heart's content, stocking up on as many calories as they can eat including from junk foods. That kind of thing doesn't work. If your overall calorie intake puts you at maintenance or even at a surplus, you'll either stay at your current weight or gain some, even if you engage in periodic fasting. 

It's also slightly harder for people to stick to than conventional calorie-restriction diets, research has found. If you're someone who thinks about food a lot, fasting may, possibly, trigger binges when all that non-eating gets to you and you just can't take it anymore. 

Having said that, intermittent fasting might be the right choice for you, both to help you lose weight and for its other potential benefits.