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Tired of this spare tire?
Low calorie diets work, but can be difficult to follow. A much simpler approach to losing weight could be to stop eating every other day.
This is called fasting over two days (ADF). As its name indicates, you starve while fasting one day, then you enjoy the next day, then repeat this pattern again and again.
During the trial of only one month of the ADF diet, study volunteers lost more than seven pounds (over 3 kg).
This weight loss occurred even though people on the ADF diet ate about 30% more on the days they were allowed to eat than normal. Even with this extra food on feast days, the study volunteers were still consuming fewer calories in general because of their fasting days, the researchers explained.
"It's an easy diet, without calculating calories, and the compliance rate is very high," said Frank Madeo, lead author of the study, professor of molecular biology at Karl-Franzens University in Graz, in Austria.
Madeo said the researchers were not studying how the ADF diet could be compared to other types of intermittent diets or a more typical caloric diet.
He said the ADF study apparently had no impact on the immune system (at least in this short-term study), but diets that simply relied on lower caloric intake could dampen the immune system.
A number of variations of fasting
Why does intermittent fasting work?
"The reason could be due to evolutionary biology," suggested Madeo. "Our physiology is familiar with periods of starvation followed by excess food." It's only in recent history that humans have had such an abundance of food that they need to limit calories to maintain their weight, he added.
Intermittent fasting diets have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. A number of celebrities, such as Beyonce and Jimmy Kimmel, reportedly used intermittent fasting to lose weight.
In addition to the BAA, there are a number of variants for fasting. Some people eat as usual a fixed number of days a week, then can fast or very little during the rest of the week. Some people limit the number of hours they eat in the day, only eating from 7:00 to 19:00, for example.
This type of diet worked for Jared Sklar, 27, of Woodland Hills, California. It went from 285 pounds (over 129 kg) before an intermittent fasting diet to 190 pounds (just over 86 kg) seven months later. Sklar said CNN that he only eats every day between noon and 8 pm, leaving the next 16 hours fasting. He also started eating healthier and exercising.
"There is always something in front of me to keep me motivated, to make sure I do not fall back into my old habits," Sklar said.
I do not recommend it yet for everyone
In the new study, the Madeo team recruited 60 people, all of them healthy adults and not obese. On average, they were slightly overweight at the beginning of the study.
Half of the study volunteers used a fasting plan every other day for a month. Thus, in a period of 48 hours, they ate only for 12 hours. Eating during this time was not restricted.
The other 30 people ate as usual, without any restrictions.
People in the fast and feast group lost an average of 4.5% of their body weight. The group that eats normally has grown on average by less than half a pound.
According to the authors of the study, in addition to losing weight, the fast and feast group also found healthy changes in risk factors for heart disease, such as lowering cholesterol.
Despite these positive results, researchers are still not recommending ADF regimens for everyone because the long-term effects of this diet are not known.
Difficult to maintain
Licensed dietician Samantha Heller of NYU Langone Health in New York said that even if people lose weight, a diet where it was fast to stay every other day would be hard to maintain.
"And if you want to exercise? And if you have a physically active job? Our body agrees not to eat for a while, but it is happier when we have a constant source of healthy food to provide the nutrients needed to perform the tasks we challenge our bodies every day, "she said.
In addition, Heller added that it's important to learn how to improve your lifestyle. "Someone who loses weight by fasting every other day will not learn strategies for leading a healthy lifestyle.You must create a healthy eating pattern with which you can live."
A simple change that people can do would be to extend the intermittent natural rhythm that everyone is already doing while sleeping. "For many people, after dinner is when they sit in front of the computer or television for a snack. So shut down the kitchen after dinner, "she suggested.
The study was published online on August 27 in Cell metabolism.
Image credit: iStock
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