Is ‘Intermittent Fasting’ for Weight Loss Effective and Reliable? Does It Harm the Stomach?

If you ask the author about the royal road to weight loss, it is——Negative Calorie Balance!

What is ‘Negative Calorie Balance’?

Here, “Negative Calorie Balance” means that if you want to lose weight, you have to consume fewer calories than you need daily. In other words, you make your body ‘run a deficit’, and only then will the extra pounds be willing to leave! If I were to give you a number, it would be——500 kcal!

For example, a woman who calculates her daily calorie needs to be 1700 kcal, if she wants to lose weight, her daily intake should be around 1200 kcal.

How to estimate calorie expenditure?

Alas, losing 500 kcal every day already makes me feel “hungry” just thinking about it!

While the beautiful prospects after successful weight loss are very attractive, afternoon tea and ice cream are equally tempting to me!

What to do?

Therefore, we need science to provide us with serious knowledge, such as, how to “diet painless”?

Intermittent Fasting Method

In recent years, Intermittent Fasting (IF) has begun to gain popularity. It essentially means eating normally at times and eating less or not at all at other times. Many of our readers have heard of this diet method and are interested but also have quite a few concerns:

Let’s talk about it. In fact, this diet method comes in several varieties:

Day 1: Normal eating, Day 2: Eat less, Day 3: Eat normally again, Day 4: Eat less again, and so on…There is no calorie restriction on eating days, but on fasting days, only 25% of the required energy is consumed, and more extreme is to only drink water and unsweetened coffee or tea on fasting days.

According to literature, this plan resulted in a weight loss of 5.2 kg in the fasting group compared to the control group (no calorie restriction) after 12 weeks. However, in a 1-year study, the fasting group (125% of the total daily calories on one day and 25% on the other) and the daily calorie restriction group (75% of total calories) had similar average weight loss.

I personally think that the fasting day of the alternate day fasting plan is really a bit of a torment~

So there came the improved version——

Five days a week of normal eating, two days of eating less, on fasting days (which are the two days of eating less) calorie intake is limited to 500~1000 kcal, and it is recommended that these two days are non-consecutive, for example, one working day and one weekend day. This is quite attractive, for example, we can choose a day suitable for “slacking off” at work, eat a little less, right? 🙂

Finally, there is the recently very popular 16:8 plan——

禁食16小时，8小时进食，通常是指午后不久（例如3点以后）停止进食直到次日。

Short-term TRF trials have shown that aligning the eating period with the circadian rhythm may reduce weight and improve metabolic indicators, but long-term trials have found no significant difference between intermittent eating and simply restricting daily calorie intake.

In summary, the author believes that no matter which “intermittent fasting” is used, it is a strategy, and the ultimate goal is the same, which is to reduce the average daily calorie intake.

You can certainly choose a method you like. For example, if you have 1-2 days of lighter workload at work, you can choose the 5:2 plan. If there’s no one to cook at home in the evening, just conveniently adopt the 16:8 plan.

What to do if you’re hungry during the fasting period? You can stay away from people eating, chew gum, etc., perhaps doctors have better solutions. Of course, you can still have three meals a day, following a “low-calorie” balanced diet. If you’re indecisive, you can choose Distinct Health “weight loss consultation”!

One Question: Is it harmful to the stomach?

When implementing the intermittent fasting therapy, it is important to pay attention to a balanced diet, and control the quality and amount of food intake.

If you control the eating time and diet structure properly, 16 hours of fasting will not have adverse effects on gastric tissue and health.

However, if an individual has gastric diseases or should not undergo this therapy, it is necessary to proceed with caution and seek medical advice in a timely manner. The best plan is to follow a weight loss plan under the guidance of a doctor to achieve better results.

In the final analysis, we need “positive energy” to maintain the “negative energy” required for weight loss. So, please hold on to the beautiful vision of a healthy future for yourself and choose a weight loss path that suits you.