Intermittent fasting diets that have become popular in recent years could increase endurance, a new study suggests.
Fasting of any kind can be used as a way to shed pounds by placing a gentle stress on the body that kicks fat-burning into high gear.
A new study by the National Institutes of Health found that when paired with moderate aerobic exercise, intermittent food deprivation may enhance endurance.
The findings have joined a larger body of research that suggests that intermittent fasting diets such as 5:2 diet and warrior diet are viable weight loss options.
A study of mice found that intermittent fasting could improve endurance, joining a growing body of research into the effectiveness of food deprivation diets for weight loss
Intermittent fasting diets aim to tap into the body’s mechanism to burn fat cells for fuel that was developed back when humans were hunter-gatherers and eating three meals per day wasn’t an option.
Similar diets utilizing this mechanism are endorsed by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian.
‘Emerging evidence suggests that [intermittent fasting] might improve overall health and reduce risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease in humans,’ said study author Mark Mattson, PhD, a senior investigator at the Laboratory of Neurosciences, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health.
The new study using mice published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) on Tuesday looked at how intermittent dietary energy restriction (IER) affects the body’s exercise endurance.
‘Our new findings in laboratory animals provide evidence that similar intermittent eating patterns can enhance the beneficial effects of aerobic exercise on endurance performance,’ Mattson said.
The researchers observed four groups of mice for two months. One group remained sedentary and had food available to eat around the clock.
The second group ran for 45 minutes on a treadmill every day and also had constant access to food.
The third group remained sedentary and was deprived of food for 24 hours every other day.
The fourth group ran for 45 minutes every day while only having access to food every other day.
After the first month, the mice on the restricted eating schedule were found to have a 10 to 15 percent lower energy intake than those who had around-the-clock access to food.
Additionally, the mice who had constant access to food increased their food intake in the first month.
Body analysis found that after the first month, the mice without food restrictions had notably higher fat mass than the restricted mice.
At the end of the two-month study, the mice that had food restrictions and ran on the treadmill daily were able to run farther and longer than the treadmill mice who had food available around the clock.
Overall, the two groups of mice that ran on the treadmill daily had better endurance than the sedentary mice.
Both groups of mice whose food was restricted were found to have a higher glucose tolerance so their metabolisms were more flexible and able to tap into the body’s fat-burning mechanism.
The study facilitators concluded that more research is needed to examine the effectiveness of intermittent fasting in improving endurance.
Intermittent fasting diets typically involve eating little to no calories for 14 to 36 hours at a time.
In the 5:2 diet, participants eat a normal amount of calories for five days of the week and reduced calories to around 25 percent of normal calorie intake on two non-consecutive days.
The warrior diet involves eating just one large meal a day, usually at night.
Intermittent fasting has been seen as an effective weight loss technique for several years, because it is believed to shift the body’s fuel source from carbohydrates to fats and ketones.
Ketones are fat cells that have been converted by the body so they can be burned as fuel.
The Ketogenic Diet has been around for several years and is supported by stars such as Kim Kardashian.
The goal of the ketogenic diet is to adapt the body to utilize fat as its primary fuel source instead of sugars.
Intermittent fasting falls into the same vein by tapping into the body’s fat burning mechanism.
The important thing for people embarking on fasting diets to remember is: you need to meet all of your nutritional needs, as per the US Department of Health and Human services.