AgCenter’s nutritionist addresses the trend towards intermittent fasting in a new publication

Intermittent fasting, a diet based on fasting and feasting times, has spread through the internet, especially on social media, by proponents of the diet.

LSU AgCenter nutritionist Elizabeth Gollub, a registered nutritionist, and Daniela Quan, a graduate of the LSU School of Nutrition and Food Sciences, noticed this trend received a lot of attention and wrote an introductory guide to this nutritional pattern.

The publication “Intermittent Fasting Diet: A Few Basics” is available online at bit.ly/IFdietAgCenter as a printable four-page guide.

“I have had a lot of questions recently about intermittent fasting from neighbors, colleagues, and the general public,” said Gollub. “People are trying or thinking of trying, primarily to shed a few pounds – that it might happen to improve overall (metabolic) health is a bonus.”

Gollub said that intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for eating habits that alternate between “feasting and fasting.” These patterns usually involve consuming 500 calories or less, or 20 to 25% of your usual intake on certain days.

Some who follow this type of diet fast and feast on alternate days, while others fast on two non-consecutive days each week. In another version called time-limited eating, a dieter expends all of his or her calories in a specific time window each day and then fasts for the remainder of the day.

“Intermittent fasting is about when you eat, not what you eat. It doesn’t include calorie monitoring – just clock or calendar monitoring, ”wrote Gollub and Quan in the guide.

This eating behavior has many advantages. The diet easily fits into most routines without disrupting family life, and research shows that intermittent fasting is just as effective as standard diets for weight loss.

Studies also show that intermittent fasting “improves glucose control, blood pressure, and lipid profiles,” wrote Gollub and Quan.

However, adapting to this eating pattern can be difficult for some. For the first two to three weeks, intermittent fasting can cause dizziness, nausea, insomnia, headaches, and other difficult symptoms.

Intermittent fasting is not recommended for children, pregnant or breastfeeding women, shift workers, people with type 1 diabetes, or for people with other specific health conditions that Gollub and Quan list in the guide.

While the benefits of intermittent fasting are clear to many, studies have not shown whether the diet is suitable as a lifelong diet, write Gollub and Quan.

Such dietary questions and concerns convinced Gollub to write the Getting Started Guide.

“As excited as the public seems to be about intermittent fasting, a lot of people just don’t know how to start,” said Gollub.

They may not know “what ‘fasting’ or ‘time-limited’ means in this context, which of these approaches – fasting or time-limited – is better, how it intersects with other diets, and whether they can expect their successes.