Intermittent fasting: impact in weight lost and cardiometabolic health

Abstract

Introduction: obesity represents a major problem worldwide, and this generates the need to find new therapeutic tools that contribute to the treatment of this disease. In recent years, intermittent fasting (IF) has emerged as a possible dietary alternative in weight loss and improvement of cardiometabolic variables, although the scientific evidence is controversial.
Objectives: to evaluate the available scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of intermittent fasting in weight loss and in the improvement of cardiometabolic variables in comparison with continuous energy restriction.
Materials and Method: a systematic search of PUBMED and Cochrane Library databases for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) has been conducted. Eleven RCTs were included, comparing IF with continuous energy restriction (CER) with a duration range of 4 to 48 weeks, in women and men with a body mass index (BMI) ≥25 kg/m2 and who assessed weight loss and cardio metabolic variables.
Results: the IF presented a median weight loss of 5.5 kg (IQR:4.7; 6.86 kg), while for CER it was 4.8 kg (IQR: 3.8; 6.6 kg). BMI, fat mass, fat-free mass, and waist circumference were significantly reduced for both the intervention and the comparator. Likewise, the cardiometabolic variables presented improvements with respect to the initial values, however, they showed heterogeneous results.
Conclusions: both IF and CER proved to be effective in improving the variables studied; the intervention did not prove to be better than the comparator.