Dieters can have their cake and eat it too — provided they follow one rule.
Spanish researchers found that mice who overate — but were only given food during certain windows, a practice known as intermittent fasting — didn’t gain weight, defying commonly given advice that you should still eat healthy to reap the benefits of the popular trend.
For the study, obese mice were put on a 1:1 or 2:1 intermittent fasting regimen — meaning they were allowed to gorge for one or two days in a row on a 60% fat diet — followed by a full day of fasting.
Even with this questionable diet, intermittent fasting prevented weight gain the same way a healthy diet would, the researchers found.
“The results could have important implications for people with obesity,” lead author Victòria Ceperuelo Mallafré, a researcher at the Joan XXIII Hospital in Tarragona, Spain, told The Post.
She says this means there’s alternatives to driving yourself crazy counting calories if you’re conscious of your weight.
“One of the biggest challenges in losing weight is sticking to a strict diet with imposing sustained caloric restriction.”
Human dieters may not need to go to the extreme of fasting for a full day.
Preliminary, unpublished results from her research group suggest that fasting for just certain hours of the day could lead to improvements, Ceperuelo Mallafré said.
Typically, humans practice intermittent fasting by not eating for anywhere between 12 and 16 hours a day, usually overnight.
The mice studied also saw their blood sugar and cholesterol levels drop without having to cut their daily caloric intake.
The findings were published last month in medical journal The Lancet and are among the latest in a wide body of research pushing the purported benefits of intermittent fasting.
