{"id":609448,"date":"2026-04-15T23:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/609448\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T23:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T23:08:10","slug":"the-actual-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting-according-to-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/609448\/","title":{"rendered":"The Actual Benefits of Intermittent Fasting, According to Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every couple of years, like the very clockwork it depends on, intermittent fasting resurfaces as a dietary trend<\/a>. “It\u2019s really interesting that it has held this kind of unusual fascination as a trend for so many years, as it isn’t anything new from a clinical nutrition perspective,\u201d says Stacie Stephenson, DC, CNS<\/a>, board member of the American Nutrition Association.<\/p>\n

To be fair, though, intermittent fasting is one of the more beneficial and universally useful nutrition strategies out there\u2014just not for the reason most people think. \u201cDo I consider intermittent fasting a weight loss diet<\/a>? No, I don’t,\u201d Dr. Stephenson says. \u201cBut I think it’s a really great tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

A tool for what, then, you might ask? Here\u2019s everything you need to know.<\/p>\n

What is intermittent fasting?<\/p>\n

\u201cIntermittent fasting is as simple as not eating for half the day,\u201d says Dr. Stephenson. \u201cFor 12\u201314 hours of your day, you\u2019re not consuming anything other than water. That is as simple as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basically, with intermittent fasting, half or more of your day is spent in a fasted state, with a specific window designated for eating. When that window occurs, and how long it lasts, is up to you\u2014nutritionists recommend up to 12 hours, but no fewer than eight\u2014as long as you\u2019re consistent.<\/p>\n

“What became known as intermittent fasting was really the concept of a window in which you consume calories,\u201d says Ashley Koff, RD<\/a>, nutrition course director for UC Irvine\u2019s Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute\u2019s Integrative and Functional Medicine Fellowship. \u201cIt came about as a way to double down on explaining to people that you should not be consuming calories all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can intermittent fasting benefit your body?<\/p>\n

First and foremost, intermittent fasting is intended not for weight loss, not for building muscle<\/a>, but as a way to restore some law and order to your body\u2019s core processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that fasting has gotten so much attention is that, in the industrialized era, and certainly with access to food becoming available 24 hours a day, we\u2019ve really blurred the boundaries of when we\u2019re consuming calories,\u201d says Koff. \u201cWe\u2019re not really meant to be consuming calories when our body is in its recovery mode, doing its cleanup work and resting. And so the concept was to give yourself guardrails: This is the time when I start eating, and this is the time when I stop eating. And that’s what became intermittent fasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

“It’s helpful for one simple reason, which probably sounds really boring, which is it rests your digestive system,\u201d says Dr. Stephenson. But that\u2019s a lot more important than it sounds. As simple as it may seem, taking control of when you eat\u2014and, more importantly, when you don\u2019t\u2014is an upstream intervention with implications that cascade all throughout your body. It\u2019s like flicking a single domino that sets a dozen Rube Goldberg machines into motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cResting your digestive system reduces total body inflammation<\/a>, which leads to better health and provides you with longevity<\/a>,\u201d Dr. Stephenson says. \u201cAnd when I say longevity, I don’t mean living to 120. I mean more healthful living\u2014being fit, not being ill, having energy, balanced hormones, balanced insulin, and stable blood glucose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can intermittent fasting help you lose weight?<\/p>\n

Anytime a nutrition trend blows up on social media, people assume it\u2019s supposed to help you lose weight. So it\u2019s worth emphasizing, for those in the back, that intermittent fasting is not a weight-loss diet. “I\u2019d say the biggest reason that people turn to intermittent fasting is for weight loss,\u201d says Dr. Stephenson. \u201cIt sounds like an easy fix. \u2018Oh, I just don’t eat for 12 hours, and then I eat my normal diet\u2014that’s led to the weight gain\u2014in the other 12.\u2019 That’s really faulty reasoning.\u201d Ultimately, weight loss comes down to calories in and calories out<\/a>. The timing of when you eat those calories has little to no bearing on that equation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every couple of years, like the very clockwork it depends on, intermittent fasting resurfaces as a dietary trend.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[64,63,538,1295,137,64099,532,13221],"class_list":{"0":"post-609448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-life-advice","14":"tag-nutrition","15":"tag-working-out"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}