Alternate-day fasting diets 'no better' than traditional dieting

Conclusion This study finds no difference between alternating-day fasting diets and daily calorie restriction diets in terms of weight loss and cardiovascular disease indicators. So this does not show that fasting diets don't work – people in this group did lose weight compared to the control group, just that they are no different to a calorie restriction diet. While this seems good evidence that one is not better than the other, there are some important things to consider before taking the findings at face value. Sample size and drop-out The drop-out rate was high. Ideally in a trial you would hope to see at least 80% of participants completing the trial to give reliable results. This trial saw around a third drop-out, which is particularly relevant given that the overall sample size was fairly small. After drop-out just 21 people in the alternate-day fasting group and 25 in the daily calorie-restriction group remained. A larger sample size could have given better evidence and might have shown more of a difference between groups. Lack of adherence Adherence to the assigned diets wasn't good. Participants in the alternate-day fasting group ate more on fasting days and less on "feasting" days than prescribed, making their diet more like the daily calorie-restricted diet. This means it wasn't a very reliable comparison of two diets, which might explain the similarity in outcomes of the two groups. Participants were also in control of their own diet after the firs...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Food/diet Source Type: news