A study conducted by researchers from the University of Bath is looking into the efficiency of popular fasting diets, showing that a simple, calory tracking diet is better at reducing weight.
The trial also discovered that fasting could provoke muscle mass losses.
The new study aimed to check if fasting leads to any particular weight loss or metabolic improvements compared to a control group consuming a similar overall caloric intake, consistently fed.
A group of healthy volunteers was randomly separated into three groups – the control group, which had to consume a diet limited to 1,500 calories a day, an intervention group fasting one day and eating 3,000 calories on the feeding day, and the final group, fasting every other day but consuming twice the recommended daily caloric intake during the feeding day.
The first conclusion was that members of the third group showed no considerable weight loss after four weeks.
The other fasting group registered an average 1.6kg weight loss after four weeks.
However, the regular caloric restriction group managed an impressive 1.9 kg (4.1lb) weight loss after the same four weeks.
Therefore, though the restricted fasting group consumed pretty much the same calory intake, they didn’t lose as much weight, and the difference between the two is considerable.
James Betts, the project’s lead researcher, said that numerous people think that fasting-based diets are particularly effective for weight loss or that the diets have unique metabolic health benefits even if you don’t end up actually losing weight.
He also explained that intermittent fasting is no “magi bullet”, and the study’s discoveries imply that there is nothing spectacular about fasting when you compare it with regular diets people normally follow.
