It’s all the rage in the last few years. Intermittent fasting is touted as the way to lose weight, improve health, and detoxify your body. But, is it really sustainable and healthy for your body? And, does it live up to it’s promises?
Long-Term Studies
To date there have been no long-term studies conducted on intermittent fasting. It has been “proven” to work in short 12-week studies. Meaning that participants lost weight and improved blood pressure and cholesterol levels (which we know can be done a number of ways not just through intermittent fasting).
Additionally, participants reported an “incessant hunger” the entire time, which leads us to conclude that it is not sustainable.
Why Sustainability is Important
Diets fail. That’s the nature of them. They are finite. No one can fast all day for the rest of their lives and endure “incessant hunger” all day every day. What a miserable way to live.
This is in essence teaching your body that you’re in a starvation situation–a crisis in the natural world. Not getting enough to eat sets off all kinds of alarms in your brain. These alarms tell all the systems of your body to increase cravings and pleasure in food so that when you are presented with a meal again you’ll eat a lot! They also tell your metabolism to slow, because it is clear that you may not get food anytime soon.
Diets Lead to Out-of-Control Eating
Intermittent fasting is a diet, a way of eating imposed by a philosophy or program outside of your body. It pulls you away from you innate hunger and fullness cues, eroding your sense of trust in your body. Our bodies are designed to give us hunger cues when we need fuel. If you are ignoring those due to fasting because you think it’s healthy, you’re actually shooting yourself in the foot.
One study conducted in 2018 on rats reported that intermittent fasting actually “broadly promoted weight gain…. and promoted greater binge-like intake and fat accumulation” (Kreisler, A. et al., 2018).
I see countless clients in my practice that come to me feeling absolutely broken by intermittent fasting. For them, they may have tried just about every diet out there finally culminating in intermittent fasting. This is typically the final straw. Their bodies are unable to calm the natural starvation responses after having dieted for a lifetime, and their cravings, binge episodes, obsession with food and weight, and feelings of hopelessness around food are at an all time high.
We Need More Research
I have also heard of plenty of people for whom intermittent fasting has been OK, and they have been able to maintain it for multiple years. However, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule–at least in my own practice.
The research to this point is pretty clear to me. It can improve all kinds of health markers in the short term, but no long term studies have been conducted. (Hmmm…I wonder why? Maybe because starving yourself half the day is highly unnatural and downright miserable?? I for one would not sign up for that research study!)
If intermittent fasting is such a cure-all, then let’s get some long term studies published and see the facts. My fear is that diet culture is promoting it so intensely that more people are succumbing to its allure and are ending up binging, despondent, and out of control.
Resources
http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.07.025
