Stop ⏰ intermittent fasting bashing - it's key to healthy ageing and weight
A fasting doctor comments on that baffling new study, and I weigh in with key tips as a nutritionist using it with women and men
Baffling headlines saying intermittent fasting is no better for weight loss than traditional calorie reduction diets this week are probably the result of including too few studies in the analysis.
That was the view of Dr Robin Mesnage, scientific director of the Buchinger Wilhelmi fasting clinics in Germany and Spain.
The new study by the usually well-trusted Cochrane organisation, entitled “Intermittent Fasting for Adults with Overweight or Obesity” sent shockwaves around the science and clinical world this week.
The results implied that weight loss is similar to calorie reduction diets and didn’t highlight the other well-researched health benefits of IF.
Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term which includes time-restricted eating (TRE) where you eat in a window of time before a long overnight fast, and the “5:2” where you eat normally 5 days a week, and consume much less on 2.
Commenting on the Cochrane review, Mesnage tells me:
“They started with 18,000 studies and they were so tight in their process they ended up selecting six articles for the effects of intermittent fasting which is very small,” says Mesnage.
“I would fish larger, taking also other types of reviews and end up probably with like 50 to 100 different clinical trials you can analyse. Then you have enough data to make conclusions.”
“I’ve been talking to other experts, really, like, top professors of nutrition, and they consider that this is really not well done,”
Mesnage added: “Intermittent fasting is a very powerful strategy for weight loss and normalisation of glycemic control.”
The Cochrane study didn’t reflect what many of us - including me a nutritional therapist using TRE with clients for more than 13 years - have seen in hundreds of previous studies, and real life.
Below I share long-gained experience of health benefits followed by 10 essential tips…