German scientists warn against disappointment when observing intermittent fasting. According to their experimental testing this weight loss method is not effective for all people. Some individuals are unlucky and in addition to intermittent fasting, they also have to strictly guard the amount of energy they take in with food.
Intermittent fasting takes several forms, including regimen 16:8 when a person does not eat for sixteen hours and takes all the food during eight hoursor the 5:2 diet, which combines five days with limited caloric intake and two days of normal eating. This group also includes the so-called time-restricted eating (TRE), when it is food intake limited to a maximum of ten hours a day and followed by a fourteen-hour fast.
Scientists from the German Institute for Nutrition Research in Potsdam-Rehbrücke found that alone time-restricted eating does not automatically lead to improved metabolic or cardiovascular health. The study followed 31 overweight or obese women who followed two different TRE regimens over two weeks—one with a meal between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., and another between 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. The diet was almost identical in both cases.
The analysis of the results shows that there was no clinically significant change in insulin sensitivity, blood sugar level, blood fats or inflammatory markers in the observed women. “Those who want to lose weight or improve their metabolism should watch not only the clock, but also energy balance. Our results suggest that the health benefits observed in previous studies were likely due by unintentionally reducing caloric intake, not by shortening meal time itself,” said the main author of the study, Professor Olga. The results were published by the professional journal Science Translational Medicine.
