Water fasting may lead to weight loss, but benefits are short-lived: study

Water fasting, in which participants consume only water for a period of time, may help with weight loss, according to a study at the University of Illinois at Chicago, but it’s unclear how long this will last. The researchers also found that other metabolic benefits of water fasting, such as lower blood pressure and cholesterol, disappeared soon after the fast. The study was published in Nutrition Reviews. According to Christa Vardi, professor of kinesiology and nutrition and lead author of the study, there do not appear to be any significant negative effects for people who follow water fasting or similar fasts in which they consume very few calories per day.

“My overall conclusion is that I think you can give it a try, but it seems like a lot of work, and all those metabolic benefits disappear,” Vardi said. However, he emphasized that no one should do any of these fasts for more than five days without medical supervision.
Varadi, an expert on intermittent fasting, said she wanted to study water fasting because last year she suddenly started getting approached by journalists who wanted to hear what she thought about it. He thought that if he was to comment, he should examine the existing research.

The new paper is a literature review of eight studies on water fasting or Büchinger fasting, a medically supervised fast popular in Europe where people consume only small amounts of juice and soup a day. Varadi’s team looked at the results of each of those papers to see what story they tell cumulatively about the effects of fasting on weight loss, as well as many other metabolic factors.

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Only a few studies in the review looked at whether participants regained the weight they had lost after the fast ended. In one of them, people regained within three months what they had lost during the five-day water fast. In two other studies, only small amounts of the lost weight came back, but those studies encouraged participants to limit their calorie intake after the fast ended.

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In contrast, it was clear that the metabolic benefits of fasting disappeared soon after the fast was terminated. Improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels were short-lived, returning to baseline levels quickly after participants resumed eating.
Some studies included participants with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, who had no ill effects from fasting, although they were closely monitored and their insulin doses were adjusted during fasting.

The most common side effects of these longer fasts were similar to those of intermittent fasting, Vardi said, such as headache, insomnia and hunger. No serious negative effects such as metabolic acidosis or death were found in the study. They noted that participants in these longer fasts lost about two-thirds of their weight in lean mass and one-third in fat mass. This is in contrast to what happens most of the time during weight loss, where more fat is lost than muscle. It makes sense that these extreme fasts would have this result, he said, because “your body needs a constant intake of protein. If it’s not there, it pulls from the muscles.”

Vardi’s research on intermittent fasting has looked at how well this regimen works for weight loss, as well as specific questions, such as whether intermittent fasting affects fertility. He found that this does not happen. Vardi said she would encourage anyone hoping to lose weight to try intermittent fasting instead of water fasting, “because there’s a lot of data to show that it can help with weight management.” ”