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Intermittent fasting is a type of fasting that allows you to eat only at certain hours of the day or week while making you fast during other times.

Effective weight loss is all about eating the right nutritious food at the right time while managing to exercise daily. However, due to busy work schedules, people these days do not find time to eat according to a schedule.

Then came these diet plans called the keto diet, intermittent fasting, and others which have helped people losing several kilograms in their body in lesser time.

Moreover, as celebrities and other famous people practice intermittent fasting to keep their bodies in shape, more people are tending to follow these diets for the best results.

While people have their fears about diet plans, intermittent fasting has proved to be healthy devoid of side effects and it is expected to have health benefits rather than just weight loss.

This has led the people to adopt intermittent fasting in the two most popular ways which are 16:8 and 5:2 intermittent fasting.

What is intermittent fasting?

For the beginners, intermittent fasting is a diet plan that allows a person to eat only during certain hours in a day or the week while allowing you to fast for the remaining time.

It works on the principle of fasting which works in helping you lose weight while keeping you healthy. Two of the most popular intermittent fastings are 16:8 and 5:2. This means that in 16:8, you fast for 16 hours and eat in the remaining hours whereas 5:2 means that you eat for 5 days in a week and fast completely for 2 days.

A huge downside to intermittent fasting: New Study

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A new study was conducted at Salk University which is based on the previous research that when two groups of mice were fed the same amount of calories, different degrees of weight gain were experienced.

The group of mice that were on 16:8 intermittent fasting lost the weight fast when compared to the group that was at 5:2.

Based on this previous study, the new study from UCSF focussed on humans but not mice.

A total of 116 people whose BMI was in the range of 27 to 46 was randomly assigned to 16:8 intermittent fasting or eat throughout the day.

In this study, the researchers found that after 12 weeks, the fasting group had an average weight loss of 12 lbs while the non-fasting group lost 1.5 lbs which is almost nearer to the fasting group.

Therefore, the study concluded that intermittent fasting may not actually be helpful in weight loss and might not even promote other health factors like blood sugar levels, lean mass etc.

The study further said that the weight loss during the intermittent fast might not be because of the fasting but due to the less calorie intake.

By Gayatri Yellayi