Intermittent fasting does not work. Scientists have proven that the amount of food is more important for weight loss

 A new study conducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins University has made it clear that weight change is most affected by the size and frequency of meals, not the interval between meals.

Interval fasting is a dietary strategy in which all meals are consumed within a short period of time each day. These windows can span from six to ten hours, resulting in a person starving for up to 18 hours each day, New Atlas writes.

From a weight loss perspective, there has been a lot of debate about whether intermittent fasting techniques are effective because they cause real metabolic changes, or whether they simply help a person eat less food. For example, a study published last year found similar weight loss results in all-day eaters and those who restricted their eating window when both groups were given the same calorie-controlled dietary restrictions. In another, earlier study of intermittent fasting without dietary guidance, participants who restricted themselves to eating for only eight hours each day instinctively reduced their daily calorie intake by about 300 calories.

This new study took a different approach. Instead of forcing the nearly 550 participants to follow a specific eating pattern, the researchers simply tracked the timing and size of their daily meals and compared them to their weight loss patterns over a six-year period. Each study participant used a smartphone app to record their sleep, wake, and meal times over several weeks. This allowed the researchers to track the time from the first meal to the last meal for each subject, as well as the time from waking up to the first meal and the time from the last meal to going to bed. The findings showed that there was no relationship between the time a person ate each day and changes in weight during the six years of follow-up. So, if a person ate his meals every day in shorter intervals of time, this did not affect weight loss in any way.

Speaking to CNN, lead researcher Wendy Bennett said there was no signal in the data to suggest that fitting food into smaller intervals each day played a role in weight loss. "Based on other studies, including ours, we're starting to think that changing the timing of meals throughout the day probably doesn't lead to immediate weight loss," Bennett said.

What really mattered for weight was the total number of medium and large meals a person had during the day. So, rather than being the potential metabolic cause of any weight-loss benefits of time-restricted eating, these results suggest that simply eating smaller portions and less often is what ultimately leads to weight loss. "Although experimental studies have shown that time-restricted eating can improve circadian rhythms and play a role in metabolic regulation, our study did not find an association in a population with a wide range of body weights," the researchers write. Importantly, we found an association between more frequent and larger meals per day and weight gain, indicating that total caloric intake is a major factor in weight gain."