So Christmas is around the corner and you’re bracing for the seemingly inevitable weight gain that comes with a month of eating and drinking and lying around.
And so you might be tempted to try one of the popular current weightless diets, like the 5:2 diet (where you eat normally for five days and fast for two) or suchlike).
And if so be advised that it’s not doing you any particular good.
To be clear: intermittent fasting doesn’t result in faster weight loss than a calorie controlled diet. Both are definitely more successful weight loss strategies than, say, eating an entire rotisserie chicken every hour.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has just published ‘Effects of intermittent and continuous calorie restriction on body weight and metabolism over 50 wk: a randomized controlled trial’ which looked at the effect of nearly a year of calorie controlled dieting and intermittent fasting, plus a control group that didn’t do anything.
This really is fast becoming my favourite gif.
And the result? “There were no significant differences between ICR and CCR regarding various circulating metabolic biomarkers.”
In other words: eating a bit less all the time is indistinguishable from eating and then starving yourself for a bit.
So the short answer is that you’ll lose weight if you eat a bit less, however the way that you actually do it doesn’t appear to make any appreciable difference.
Or you could just chow down now and make it next year’s problem. Bon appetit!