Keto diet, Intermittent fasting, and more such fad diets recently took the fitness world by storm. Scores of people, including many celebrities, swear by one of these diets, which led to many others following them blindly. Intermittent fasting, that follows time-restricted eating, showed promising results on many of them, giving us hope of finding a sure-shot way to weight loss. But a new study debunked all the notions we had formed about intermittent fasting. It claims that this type of diet may not help you lose weight as people claim.
Intermittent fasting limits eating to specific hours of the day, after which, you are supposed to fast strictly for the rest of the hours. The research, conducted by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and presented at American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2020, discovered that the diet did not impact weight among overweight adults with prediabetes or diabetes.
"We have wondered for a long time if when one eats during the day affects the way the body uses and stores energy. Most prior studies have not controlled the number of calories, so it wasn't clear if people who ate earlier just ate fewer calories. In this study, the only thing we changed was the time of day of eating." said study author Nisa M. Maruthur, M.D., M.H.S., associate professor of medicine, epidemiology and nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
(Also Read: 16:8 Diet: Would You Try This Diet That Promotes Intermittent Fasting To Lose Weight?)
Intermittent fasting was considered an effective weight loss diet.
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In the 12-week study, 41 overweight adults with an average age of 59 years, with prediabetes or diabetes, were asked to eat the same healthy, pre-prepared foods. One part of the group ate the bulk of their calories before 1 p.m. each day, and the other group ate 50% of their calories after 5 p.m. Weight and blood pressure levels were measured at the beginning of the study, then at 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 12 weeks.
It was seen that people in both groups lost weight because of healthy eating and had decreased blood pressure regardless of when they ate.
"We thought that the time-restricted group would lose more weight yet that didn't happen. We did not see any difference in weight loss for those who ate most of their calories earlier versus later in the day. We did not see any effects on blood pressure either," concluded Maruthur.