Under certain conditions, fasting may help you lose weight. Losing weight is a matter of math. The fewer calories you eat and the more calories you burn in activity, the more weight you lose. When you go for awhile without eating, you lose weight, especially if you are active despite the calorie deprivation. However, there are numerous potential problems with fasting, not the least of which is that you are not very likely to keep the weight off.
History
Fasting involves forgoing food for some period of time, ranging from skipping a meal to going days without eating. Fasting has been practiced for thousands of years in Judasim, Christianity and Eastern religions as a means to obtain spiritual purification and commune with God. Weight loss was a commonly noted side effect. The use of fasting was popularized in the 1970's, when author Stanley Borroughs published "A "Master Cleanser," in which he advocated a cleansing and weight loss procedure that involved fasting and drinking a concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, salt and water from six to 12 times per day. This fasting procedure gained more recent notoriety when singer/actress Beyoncé Knowles announced on Oprah that she lost weight for her role in "Dreamgirls" by following Burrough's fasting procedure. The Internet is brimming with fasting diets that vary in duration, including skipping meals, monthly one-day fasts, fasting every third day, fasting every other day and fasting for several days every six to eight weeks. Fasting advocate, Elson Haas, M.D., as well as early proponents of fasting like Herbert Shelton, N.D. say that fasting has various health benefits, including improving allergies, diabetes, heart disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension and cancer.
Fasting Rationale
Fasting proponents Leaon Chaitow, N.D. and Elson Haas say that fasting gives the body and particularly the digestive system a "physiological rest", which enhances detoxification and allows for healing that can improve digestion and metabolism, as well as cardiac, circulatory and immune system functioning. Fasts of one or two days are thought to remove toxins because the body runs out of carbohydrates, goes into ketosis and burns fat cells, where many toxins are stored. Improvements in weight management are though to potentially occur because the physiological rest re-sensitizes the body to glucose and insulin, says fasting and health researcher Benjamin Horne in the December 2007 edition of "U.S. News & World Report." These health professionals do not advocate fasting as a weight loss tool so much as a means to enhance overall health.
Fasting Weight Loss
Proponents of fasting as a diet tool say that the detoxification that takes place during fasting enhances metabolism so you burn more calories, and they observe that the calorie deprivation that occurs while fasting promotes weight loss simply by decreasing caloric intake so drastically. These fasting-as-diet-aid advocates typically lack professional credentials and often seem to have an EBook or other products to sell, so their enthusiasm may be suspect. Notably, the long-term mechanisms and effects of fasting on weight loss in humans have not been widely studied. As Horne notes, most studies have been done on rodents, roundworms and slugs.
Fasting Questions
Not all medical experts concur that fasting enhances detoxification, and critics offer that there is little scientific evidence for the alleged detoxification effects of fasting. Many health and fitness experts suggest that you shouldn't skip meals because this can alter your metabolism, increasing the proportion of calories that are directly converted into fatty acids for long-term storage. When faced with recurrent periods of no caloric intake, your body may go into "starvation mode," decreasing its metabolic rate and packing away calories for future use. Also, focusing on fasting may direct your attention and efforts away from the practices that can most effectively help you manage your weight, such as daily exercise and following a healthy, balanced diet of modest portions. Consult with your physician before trying any type of fasting diet.
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