Calorie Restriction = Calorie Restriction.

At the end of the day:
Calorie Restriction
equals
Calorie Restriction.

See the article below from Dr. Arya Sharma, who is one of the world’s top medical obesity specialists.

Dr. Sharma is highly respected by obesity researchers, health professionals. His opinions are based on many years of extensive obesity research as well as many years of practical experience with obese patients. 

Alternate Day Fasting Is No Better Than Any Other Fad Diet
                   by Dr. Arya Sharma,  July 11, 2017

It seems that every year someone else comes up with a diet that can supposedly conquer obesity and all other health problems of civilization.

In almost every case, the diet is based on some “new” insight into how our bodies function, or how our ancestors (read – hunters gatherers (never mind that they only lived to be 35) ate, or how modern foods are killing us (never mind that the average person has never lived longer than ever before), or how (insert remote population here) lives today with no chronic disease.

Throw in some scientific terms like “ketogenic”, “guten”, “anti-oxidant”, “fructose”, or “insulin”, add some level of restriction and unusual foods, and (most importantly) get celebrity endorsement and “testimonials” and you have a best-seller (and a successful speaking career) ready to go.

The problem is that, no matter what the “scientific” (sounding) theories suggest, there is little evidence that the enthusiastic promises of any of these hold up under the cold light of scientific study.

Therefore, I am not the least surprised that the same holds true for the much hyped “alternative-day fasting diet”, which supposedly is best for us, because it mimics how our pre-historic ancestors apparently made it to the ripe age of 35 without obesity and heart attacks.

Thus, a year-long randomized controlled study by John Trepanowski and colleagues, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that alternate day fasting is evidently no better in producing superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection compared to good old daily calorie restriction (which also produces modest long-term results at best).

In fact, the alternate day fasting group had significantly more dropouts than both the daily calorie restriction and control group (38% vs. 29% and 26% respectively). Mean weight loss was virtually identical between both intervention groups (~6 Kg).

Purists of course will instantly criticize that the study did not actually test alternative-day fasting, as more people dropped out and most of the participants who stayed in that group actually ate more than prescribed on fast days, and less than prescribed on feast days – but that is exactly the point of this kind of study – to test whether the proposed diet works in “real life”, because no one in “real life” can ever be expected to be perfectly compliant with any diet. In fact, again, as this study shows, the more “restrictive” the diet (and, yes, starving yourself every other day is “restrictive”), the greater the dropout rate.

Unfortunately, what counts in real life is not what people SHOULD be doing, but what people actually do.

The question really is not whether or not alternate-day fasting is better for someone trying to lose weight but rather, whether or not “recommending” someone follows an alternate-day fasting plan (and them trying to follow it the best they can) is better for them. The clear answer from this study is “no”.

So why are all diets the same (in that virtually all of them provide a rather modest degree of long-term weight loss)?

My guess is that no diet (or behavior for that matter) has the capability of fundamentally changing the body’s biology that acts to protect and restore body fat in the long-term. Irrespective of whether a diet leads to weight loss in the short term and irrespective of how it does so (or how slow or fast), ultimately no diet manages to “reset” the body-weight set point to a lower level, that would biologically “stabilize” weight loss in the long-term.

Thus, the amount of long-term weight loss that can be achieved by dieting is always in the same (rather modest) ballpark and it is often only a matter of time before the biology wins out and put all the weight back on.

Clearly, I am not holding my breath for the next diet that comes along that promises to be better than everything we’ve had before.

My advice to patients is, do what works for you, but do not expect miracles – just find the diet you can happily live on and stick to it.

Dr. Arya M. Sharma, MD, PhD, FRCPC is a medical doctor and university professor of medicine and obesity research.  His research focuses on the evidence-based prevention and management of obesity and its complications.

He has authored and co-authored more than 350 scientific articles and has lectured widely throughout the world on the etiology and management of obesity and related cardiovascular disorders. Dr. Sharma is regularly featured as a medical expert in national and international TV and print media and maintains a widely read obesity blog at www.drsharma.ca.

I have been observing and experimenting with various forms of Intermittent Fasting since early 2006, which was BEFORE the best-selling intermittent fasting books… including… JUDDD, ADF, EatStopEat, 5/2, and EOD ... were published.  And BEFORE the concept of Intermittent Fasting as a diet became famous on the internet.

This past 12 years, I’ve closely watched many diet “experts” talk about the latest fasting research, while providing their own anecdotal evidence.   I’ve seen both of these offered as evidence to prove the "expert's"  own opinions about the subject. 

As an attorney, I’ve been trained to notice when people improperly characterize evidence, especially when they misstate evidence or misquote a witness in order to prove a point they are trying to make.

This is something that is commonly done by diet “experts”.  Unfortunately even medical doctors whose overall medical expertise and opinions I tend to respect, sometimes engage in this type of Behavior, and apply valid scientific research incorrectly in order to support “a hypothesis with zero proof, which is really no more than that expert’s own wishful thinking.”

For example, even Dr. Jason Fung, who appears to be a very dedicated, well-educated, and experienced medical expert specializing in the area of Diabetes, …(and who is extensively quoted here in the Fasting Blog Category section of DietHobby as an intermittent fasting expert) … sometimes improperly characterizes research evidence in order to prove points which appear to be merely based on his “wishful thinking” due to the lack of valid supporting evidence.

One of Dr. Fung’s hypothesis is that people cannot lose weight by using “calorie restriction”, but that they can lose weight by using “Intermittent fasting”, and he claims that there is a very big difference between these two behaviors.  As evidence for this principle, he often compares scientific Research about Biggest Loser Contestants, who he labels as “Calorie Restricting”, versus scientific Research about Gastric Bypass Participants, who he labels as “Fasting”.

Of course, the main problem with the Comparison is that BOTH of these weight-loss methods are based on Calorie Restriction in that Post-gastric bypass, participants do not “Fast”.  They do not go without eating. After weight-loss surgery they eat small amounts of food daily.  First, they ingest liquid food, then soft food, and then go on to firm food. 

During the first year after my own open RNY gastric bypass, 25 years ago, my experience was similar to what everyone else commonly reports.  I ate between 300 and 600 calories per day … which was as much food as my body would tolerate at the time.  I did not fast.  I did not consciously “restrict calories”,  but instead focused on eating only the amounts and kinds of food that would prevent me from lying on my bed with dry heaves.  I did not fast. My surgery restricted calories for me.

Since both of these forms of eating behavior leading to weight-loss were based on Calorie Restriction, Dr. Fung misstated the evidence which he provided as proof for his hypothesis.  As a result, his hypothesis lacks proof.  This reduces it back to his own personal “wishful thinking”.   Over the past several years, Dr. Fung has failed to address or provide any explanation for this error, even though I have seen it pointed out to him on several different occasions.

I find it interesting that Dr. Fung also relies heavily on Dr Krista Varady’s past scientific research on Intermittent Fasting to prove that Intermittent Fasting is superior to Calorie Restriction… although in her own words .... Dr. Varady says that Intermittent Fasting is a form of "Calorie-Restriction".

 When Dr. Varady was interviewed about this recent research study which is the subject of Dr. Sharma’s article, she said:

“I really thought people would have an easier time and lose more weight on the [intermittent fasting diet] and I was shocked they lost the same amount,” says study author Dr. Krista Varady, an associate professor of nutrition the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of the book The Every-Other-Day Diet. “The take-home message for me is that this diet isn’t for everyone.”

"I don't think there's anything magical to the diet at all," she said of alternate-day fasting. "I think it's just another way of tricking people into eating less food or helping people to kind of monitor how much food intake there is or how much food they're taking in."

You can find the complete study in my previous article: “Fasting is No Better For You Than Regular Calorie Restriction - new Scientific Study”.