Most people overindulge during the holidays. This is despite how much of the year they’ve devoted to healthy eating. From Halloween right into the New Year, you’re faced with a range of tempting delicacies.
But new studies suggest that you may be able to have your cake and eat it, too.
So, where does the trick lie? Well, it is not in what you eat, but when you eat.
To explore the health benefits of fasting, researchers discovered that people who have a high risk for developing diabetes saw a significant improvement in their health when they ate their meals during a 10-hour window and then fasted for the remainder of the day.
Change your eating habits rather than your diet
Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that intermittent fasting and traditional medications caused weight loss and reduced cholesterol and blood pressure. It also reduced abdominal fat and stabilized insulin and blood sugar levels for participants who already had metabolic syndrome.
A metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that occur together and increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes (1).
You may need more than just diet and exercise
Study (2), published in the journal Cell Metabolism, suggests that intermittent fasting may effectively treat metabolic syndrome already treated with medications.
According to the researchers, combining intermittent fasting with medications can help patients better manage their disease (3).
The researchers also emphasized the need for significant lifestyle interventions for metabolic syndrome that are easy for people to adopt.
Findings from the study suggest that restricted eating can serve as an “add-on” to drug treatment and prevent the need for medication.
Here’s how to do it
Intermittent fasting involves making significant reductions to your calorie intake on certain days and eating normally the rest of the time. For example, some people fast every other day, while others fast twice a week (the 5:2 diet). Calorie intake is restricted to around 400 to 600 calories on fasting days.
Recent studies have shown that this method plays a vital role in weight loss. For example, a review (4) found that people on an intermittent fasting plan lost over 9% of their body weight within six months. This is equivalent to the weight loss observed in studies of traditional dieting. What’s more, over 80% of the participants complied with ease.
In another study (5), obese or overweight women were randomly assigned to either a regular diet or an intermittent fasting diet in which they ate 1,500 or 540 calories daily, respectively. After six months, it was observed that women in both groups had lost an equal amount of weight (between 11 to 13 pounds).
The researchers advised people who wished to do an intermittent fast to do it in the evenings twice a week. This implies skipping dinner or eating small stuff like fruit or yogurt. This means they take in two-thirds of their regular calorie intake on fasting days, or about 1,300 calories, rather than their typical 2,000.
Intermittent fasting may work well for meal skippers. However, people with diabetes should not try this diet as it may be detrimental to their health. Talk to your healthcare practitioner before attempting fasting if you still have questions about your health.
