Intermittent fasting may not help you lose belly fat: Study

Intermittent fasting is one of the most talked about diet trends. The fasting method requires people to perform short term fasts at regular intervals, where they limit the calorie consumption drastically for certain days of the week or during the specific window of the day.

Proponents of the diet claim that it is great for weight loss and helps you stave off heart disease.

But doctors and experts have warned that the diet is not for everyone. Most men who have tried the diet have reported positive results. But for many women, any type of Intermittent fasting, be it overnight 16 hours fasting or capping the calories at 500 for two days a week have backfired.

Intermittent fasting has various side effects, which also includes rebound overeating, bad sleep and muscle loss. As per a new study published in the journal Cell reports, there can be another side effect of intermittent fasting, your visceral fat also called belly fat may potentially not go away and may build resistance to fasting.

For the study, researchers in Australia examined various fat tissue types in mice to see how the tissue responded differently to every other day fasting, also called alternate day fasting.

Mouse physiology is similar to humans, but their metabolism is much faster, allowing scientists to observe changes more rapidly than in human trials and also examine issues that are difficult to sample in humans.

It was found that when in a fasted state, the belly fat adapted to protect its energy stores. During fasting, the fat tissues provide energy to the rest of the body by realising fatty acid molecules. However, the belly fat became resistant to this release of fatty acids during fasting. There were also signs that belly fat and subcutaneous fat increased their ability to store energy as fat and likely to rapidly rebuild the fat store before the next fasting period.

In other words, if you have been trying every other day fasting and have not seen any results, it can be because you have highly adaptable visceral fat.

The findings of the study may not be applied to different diet regimes such as the 5:2 diet, which is common in people wanting to lose weight.