Do you want to lose weight and feel better than ever? Are you ready to take the first step and be happier? Are you looking for an easy and effective way to lose weight? Under these questions and the premise “losing weight is possible”, the various weight loss methods that are promoted propose behaviors that range from the logical to the unreal and from the unreal to the magical.
The intermittent fasting diet, one of the regimes that is gaining more and more followers, promises everyone who follows it a rapid and strong weight loss. However, is it as effective and good as it is said? Is it scientifically backed? What do nutrition experts say?
To start talking about intermittent fasting, you have to distinguish what is a diet prescribed by an expert from what is chosen haphazardly, because a celebrity, an athlete or the influencer on duty says so.
“Intermittent fasting is a therapeutic tool for the management of some pathologies, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, for example, which consists of interspersing periods of fasting, which would be moments of not eating, with other moments of ingestion”, he tells the UNQ Science News Agency, Mariángeles Espiño, specialist in Nutrition and Diabetes, head of the Nutrition Service of the Trinidad Quilmes sanatorium. And he details that these periods, which could be called “fasting windows” and “eating windows” may vary in duration.
How is intermittent fasting?
The specialist explains that there are fasts that can start with 8 hours and increase to windows of more hours. “There is even a 24-hour fast, 1 or 2 times a week, or use the 5 × 2 strategy, that is, 5 days of healthy, balanced and orderly food and 2 days with caloric restriction, where it is a question of not exceeding 500 or 600 calories, always trying that these two days are interspersed by 24 hours of balanced diet”.
In this sense, it is important to see what is done during periods of ingestion, since many times, when it is not controlled by health professionals, people can interpret that eating at those moments is eating at will, regardless of the quantity and quality of food, because I know you have been fasting. “In reality, what it is about is generating these moments of fasting to launch a different ketosis metabolism, which will allow us to use not glucose as fuel but ketone bodies, which are originated from adipose tissue, in the search to burn calories from this tissue, and thus try to find the weight loss”.
A diet between lights and shadows
According to specialists, many times, when you have difficulty putting a diet into practice, or are tired of “dieting” forever, starting with intermittent fasting can be a good strategy. “In that sense, at first it can be significant in losing weight but then you have to sustain it; That is why the important thing is to see what foods we incorporate in those windows of moments of yes intake ”, explains Espiño.
Even so, it is important to emphasize those who should not do intermittent fasting: “It is not recommended for pregnant women, children, people who have some type of eating disorder and those who have type 1 diabetes, who do not have follow-up and a control of their glycemia, through continuous glucose monitoring.
The origin of intermittent fasting and more controversies
In dialogue with the UNQ Science News Agency, Monica Katz, Medical Nutrition Specialist, author of the book “We are what we eat”, He says that intermittent fasting emerges strongly in the 21st century from the participation of elite Muslim athletes. These athletes have during the ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, respected by Muslims throughout the world as the month of fasting) the necessity of fasting during the day and eating only in the afternoon/evening. From this, the scientific interest appears to see what is the performance or sports performance of these athletes. And that is when the interest in fasting arises. that they were born for elite athletes and not for ordinary people.
“If we ask about the benefits, it is obvious that it is effective because people do not eat for a whole day. So, those who can adhere to the fast will surely lose weight since, concretely, they do not eat, ”he says. For Katz, in any health practice it is important to look at efficacy and safety: “In intermittent fasting, safety is not scientifically proven in the medium and long term; the published works are based on short deadlines, of two months”.
And he concludes with a question: “Can we recommend to the population a practice that has no evidence of safety to manage a chronic disease such as obesity? We are facing a huge ethical dilemma. Hunger is a social debt, it should not be a treatment”.