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Does intermittent fasting work?
It does for weight loss. Its other supposed benefits are debatable.
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Limiting the food intake restrictions to a couple of days a week requires less willpower, which might make intermittent fasting easier to stick with.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
The Economist
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Diets come and diets go. One of the most popular today is “intermittent fasting” in which, as the name suggests, the idea is to limit one’s food intake to certain time windows. One popular variant, the “5:2 diet”, requires people to eat either very small amounts, or nothing at all, on two days a week, but imposes no restrictions on the other five.
Intermittent fasting is popular. And as a weight-loss strategy, it has several things going for it. One is that it is uncomplicated. There is no need to weigh the ingredients of every meal, as some diets demand, nor to change what you eat drastically. Limiting the restrictions to a couple of days a week, or several hours a day (most of which are spent asleep) also requires less willpower, which might make it easier to stick with.
