The idea of dieting has been around for so many years, in fact, hundreds of years already. But people never seem to stop looking for the most effective and fastest way to get rid of unwanted weight. Today, alternate-day fasting is gaining popularity, and a study weighs its effectiveness in comparison to other methods of dieting.

A new study published by JAMA Internal Medicine compared the effects of fasting every other day with another dieting technique which is restricting daily calorie intake, and it was found that both methods produced just about the same results, Science Daily reported.

In the study, Krista A. Varady, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago, together with her co-authors randomly assigned 100 participants to either go on traditional diet, or do fasting every other day, or do nothing at all. According to The Verge, a year after this experiment, those people who did the alternate-day fasting did not really show better results when it comes to weight loss and health benefits compared to the ones who followed the traditional dieting method.

Varady explained that this does not mean that fasting does not work, but she said that fasting is not really that necessary or it will not be working more effectively than normal dieting.

The article concludes that the findings from this randomized clinical trial only goes to show there is really no significant or superior adherence from alternate day fasting; not in losing weight, weight maintenance, nor in improving someone's state of health or in risk indicators pertaining to cardiovascular disease. There is not much difference compared to the normal calorie restricting diet, the article continues.

Regardless of the approach, there is not really one approach that will work for everybody. At the end of the day, it is about being realistic about what a person can handle when it comes to trying to trim down weight.

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Tags University of Illinois, Weight loss