In a new study, researchers found that a restricted intermittent diet can provide better weight loss results and is easier to stick with than a continuous weight-loss diet.
The research was conducted by a team at the Queensland University of Technology and elsewhere.
The “MATADOR” study recruited 51 participants, all obese men.
MATADOR is short for Minimizing Adaptive Thermogenesis And Deactivating Obesity Rebound.
After four weeks in which their caloric needs were calculated, the participants followed either a or a “restricted intermittent diet” of two weeks on followed by two weeks off for 16 weeks.
The team found that men who followed the restricted intermittent diet achieved greater weight loss and fat loss at the end of the study.
This suggests that a two-week-on, two-week-off diet plan could help you shed unwanted weight and keep it off.
The team explains that the breaks keep people’s metabolism from resetting at a lower caloric need, a reset that makes it harder to keep losing weight without more calorie cuts.
Future work needs to examine the effectiveness of this dietary approach when individuals are not provided meals in a tightly controlled study.
The lead author of the study is N M Byrne from the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences and Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.
The study is published in the International Journal of Obesity.
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