Intervall Fasting helps you lose weight - but no better than traditional diets

Study: Intervall fasting has no advantage over conventional diets

Fat or carbohydrate-reduced diets, keto or paleo: There are numerous weight loss programs that promise quick success. Especially the so-called interval fasting should contribute to the rapid weight reduction. However, researchers now report that this weight loss method offers no benefit over traditional diets.

Different methods for losing weight

People who want to lose weight often try this with a variety of methods. Some reduce fat on their diet, others say that low carb diets can make you lean faster. And a few also try it with more unusual methods such as the Paleo diet, which feeds you as in the Stone Age. However, there are scientists who think that such diets are almost non-existent because of the rapid rejuvenation of the yo-yo effects. Nevertheless, there are always new weight loss methods, which find many followers. A relatively new diet trend is widely praised: Intervall fasting. But is this method actually better than other diets? This question has now been answered in a new study.

Intervall fasting is currently very much in vogue. Is this method of losing weight actually better than other diets? This question has now occupied German researchers. (Image: karepa / fotolia.com)

Intervall fasting is trendy

Eat eight hours and starve for the next 16 hours? Or rather fasting for two whole days and enjoying the rest of the week without remorse?

Interval fasting - better known as a 16: 8 or 5: 2 diet - is very much in vogue. Numerous popular guidebooks on the subject promise weight loss without yo-yo effect as well as a lasting change in the metabolism and thus an improvement in health.

But the German Nutrition Society (DGE) warns that intermittent or intermittent fasting is not suitable for permanent weight regulation. In addition, there is a lack of scientifically based studies on the long-term effects of this diet.

"In fact, there are only a few smaller studies on intermittent fasting, but they have astonishingly positive effects on metabolic health," explains Ruth Schübel of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in a statement.

"That made us curious and we wanted to know if these effects could be detected in a larger group of patients and over a longer period of time."

Weight loss method scientifically studied

Schübel, together with a team of DKFZ researchers and scientists from the Heidelberg University Hospital, examined 150 overweight and obese participants over a period of one year using the HELENA study.

Subjects were randomly assigned to three groups at baseline: One-third fed on a conventional reduction diet for twelve weeks, reducing daily caloric intake by 20 percent.

A second group committed themselves to a 5: 2 program, with which they also saved 20 percent of the food calories over the entire week.

The control group did not follow a specific diet plan but was, like all other study participants, motivated to follow a balanced diet as recommended by the DGE.

Following the actual diet phase, the researchers documented the weight and health status of the study participants for a total of 38 more weeks.

Surprising result

The result, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, may be as surprising as sobering for fans of interval fattening.

Because, as the HELENA scientists found out, the health status of both diets improved equally.

"In the subjects of both groups decreased the body weight visceral fat, so the unhealthy belly fat, as well as the fat deposits in the liver," says Schübel.

The change in the distribution of fat in the participants' bodies was precisely determined by means of a special MRI imaging performed by Johanna Nattenmüller at Heidelberg University Hospital.

The good news is that even a small success in the diet is a big gain for your health:

If you reduce your body weight by only five percent, you lose about 20 percent of the dangerous belly fat and even over a third of the liver fat - regardless of the diet.

The study authors also did not differentiate between the two diets in all the other metabolic values ​​analyzed and in all the biomarkers and gene activities investigated.

"Just do it!"

The HELENA study does not support the euphoric expectations for interval fasting, but it also shows that this method is no worse than a conventional diet.

"Moreover, it seems that some people find it easier to be very disciplined on two days instead of counting calories every day," said Tilman Kühn, lead researcher in the study.

"Keeping the new weight, however, also requires a permanent dietary change to a balanced diet according to the recommendations of the DGE," explains the expert.

Kühn interprets the study results in such a way that it is not primarily about the diet, but rather to decide on a method and then to pull through.

"This is also indicated by a recent study comparing low carb and low fat diets, that is, reducing carbohydrates versus fat reduction with an otherwise balanced diet," says Kühn.

Here, too, the study participants had achieved comparable effects using both methods.

The credo of the team of scientists is therefore: "Just do it!" For body and health in any case benefit from a weight reduction, if this is done by a serious diet and based on a balanced diet. (Ad)