It depends on your Intermittent Fasting Schedule. 

Let me explain by talking about a new research that came out this year! Bosch de Basea & his associates got rats to eat an unlimited amount of high-fat and high-sugar foods for 12 weeks.  As you can imagine, this led to quite the weight gain! (1)  

Once the 12 weeks were up, they removed the high-fat and high-sugar foods and replaced it with a standard rat chow, which had balanced macronutrients (less fat, significantly less sugar, and more protein).  

Then they separated the rats into 3 groups:

1.  The first group was allowed to eat the rat chow whenever they wanted.
2. The second group was put on an intermittent fasting diet.  For 2 days every week (not consecutive) their food intake was reduced by 75%, and then they could eat normally the other 5 days. 
3. The third group was put on a diet where their food intake was reduced by 30%  every day consistently.  

The result of this study showed that the rats who were doing intermittent fasting 2 days/week, were eating a lot more on their off days.  So, they ended up eating a similar amount of food as the first group (who was allowed to eat the chow whenever they wanted). 

This essentially explains that severely restricting your food a few days a week will likely lead you to eat more on alternate days, which will end up being approximately the same overall weekly calories as if you would’ve skipped the Intermittent fasting altogether and simply eaten balanced food when you were hungry.   

Now don’t get me wrong, these rats lost weight!  The first and the second group lost the same amount of weight (average of 4.45% weight loss for the group eating as they pleased, and 4.85% weight loss for the group on the intermittent fasting diet).  

This leads me to question why suffer through intermittent fasting for a few days, if your overall weekly calorie intake will be the same as if you would use your instinct and eat balanced/nutritious food when you are hungry and stop eating when you are satiated.  

The Weight Loss Strategy that Works Even Better!

What happened to the third group of rats?  Well, they lost an average of 13.5% body weight in the same amount of time!  

I know intermittent fasting is the new thing that everybody is doing. But before you jump into it, remember that a consistent calorie reduction works better if your goal is weight loss.   

What this also tells us is if you absolutely want to do intermittent fasting to lose weight, you’re better off doing the type where you fast a little bit everyday.  This would give you similar results as the third group of rats who were subjected to a moderate calories reduction everyday.  An example of fasting a little bit everyday would be to limit your food intake to an 8 hour window.  

You can do this by fasting for 16 hours, and eating for 8 hours.  This could look like skipping breakfast, eating lunch around noon, eating snacks in the afternoon, and eating dinner around 5-6PM, and making sure you stop eating at 8PM.  

How to Make Calorie Reduction or Intermittent Fasting Consistent?  

You need to learn HOW to introduce healthy habits into your life so they can STICK!

You need to learn the science and the strategies behind MAINTAINING healthy habits.

Willpower only lasts so long.  

This is crucial because otherwise, you just pile on habits Willy Nelly, thinking they will stick but they don’t - because you don't know how to build them.  

It’s like wanting to build a brick wall, but only having bricks.  You can’t just pile a bunch of breaks on top of each other and expect to have a wall that stays up.  Your pile of bricks will topple over as soon as a big gust of wind comes in, or rain, or someone that walks by and bumps into it!

You need mortar, you need a trowel, you need to know what position and what order to put your bricks in to have a good foundation. Then you can expect that wall to still be there in 6 months - even in 10 years!!

It’s the same thing with habits.  It’s not enough to know what habits to add to your life.  You need to know when, how, where to lay them so they can stick and still be there 6 months from now, 5 years from now!  

Does that make sense?  If this resonates with you, maybe you would like to know what the other 4 crucial steps are to lose 30lbs or more.  I explain it all in my FREE Online Masterclass.  Click HERE to Register!

Love Julie, Certified Health Coach

References

1- Bosch de Basea, L., Boguñà, M., Sánchez, A., Esteve, M., Grasa, M., & Romero, M. del M. (2024). Sex-Dependent Metabolic Effects in Diet-Induced Obese Rats following Intermittent Fasting Compared with Continuous Food Restriction. Nutrients, 16(7), 1009. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16071009