Intermittent fasting is not associated with weight loss over six years, new study finds

A study pub­lished Wednes­day in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion found that how much you eat is more impor­tant than when you eat when it comes to weight loss.

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty asked 547 peo­ple to use a mobile app to record their meal sizes and the times they ate each day for six months.

Then, we used elec­tron­ic med­ical charts to ana­lyze the weight of the par­tic­i­pants for five years before start­ing the dietary record and for about half a year after start­ing the diet record.

In this study, record­ed meals were divid­ed into three sizes: small meals <500 calo­ries, medi­um meals 500 to 1,000 calo­ries, and large meals >1,000 calories.

Over­all, par­tic­i­pants who ate large and mod­er­ate meals gained weight over the six-year peri­od, while those who ate small meals lost weight.

This is con­sis­tent with the long-stand­ing rule that few­er calo­ries con­tribute to weight loss.

Researchers found no asso­ci­a­tion between weight changes and the prac­tice of restrict­ing food intake to spe­cif­ic time inter­vals (often called inter­mit­tent fasting).

No rela­tion­ship was found between weight change and the tim­ing of the first meal after wak­ing or the last meal or snack before going to bed.

“This study shows that chang­ing the tim­ing of meals does not pre­vent weight gain over years and years, and that per­haps the most effec­tive strat­e­gy is to tru­ly con­trol how much you eat and overeat.”

It shows that you can eat less and eat less,” said study author Wendy Ben­nett, M.D., asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Johns Hop­kins Medicine.

The study includ­ed peo­ple of dif­fer­ent weights, includ­ing those who were over­weight and those who were severe­ly obese. How­ev­er, the observed weight changes were gen­er­al­ly small.

Peo­ple who ate one extra meal each day gained, on aver­age, less than half the extra weight in a year com­pared to those who did­n’t eat that extra meal.

Court­ney Peter­son, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion­al sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma at Birm­ing­ham, who was­n’t involved in the study, said, “The effect is so small that I would­n’t tell any­one to change what they’re doing. Let’s go,” he said.

But Ben­nett says there is evi­dence that even after adjust­ing for ini­tial weight, restrict­ing food intake can help with weight loss (over­weight peo­ple are more like­ly to gain and lose weight). seems to be easier).