Fasting on alternate days may help shave off the kilos better than other intermittent fasting and calorie-restriction diets, according to a new study.
While scientists have called for more work to confirm the findings, a new review suggests the so-called feast-and-famine approach to dieting may have greater benefits when it comes to weight loss.
Alternate-day fasting involves a 24-hour fast on every second day and has become more popular in recent years.
Other intermittent fasting approaches to dieting have also grown in popularity, including time-restricted eating and whole-day fasting.
With the former, people only eat for a certain number of hours in the day, with an example being the 16:8 diet, which involves a 16-hour fasting period, followed by an eight-hour eating period.
Meanwhile, the latter includes the 5:2 diet, which involves five days of eating and two days of fasting.
Researchers from Scotland, the United States, Canada and Germany wanted to compare fasting methods to continuous energy-restriction diets by looking at all of the available evidence.
They examined data from 99 studies involving more than 6,500 people.
Those involved in the studies had an average body mass index (BMI) of 31 and almost nine in 10 (89%) had pre-existing health conditions.
The research team found that both intermittent fasting diets and calorie-restricted diets led to weight loss.
But compared with continuous energy restriction, alternate-day fasting was the only strategy to show benefit in body weight reduction.
People on such diets lose 1.29kg more, according to the study, which has been published in The BMJ medical journal.
The authors said that alternate-day fasting showed a “trivial” reduction in body weight when compared with both time-restricted eating and whole-day fasting.
“Minor differences were noted between some intermittent fasting diets and continuous energy restriction, with some benefit for an alternate- day fasting strategy with weight loss in shorter duration trials,” the authors wrote.
“All intermittent fasting strategies and continuous energy-restriction diets showed a reduction in body weight when compared with an ad-libitum [as desired] diet.
“Of three intermittent fasting diets (i.e. alternate-day fasting, time-restricted eating and whole-day fasting), alternate day fasting showed benefit in body weight reduction compared with continuous energy restriction.” – PA Media/dpa