Is Intermittent Fasting Good for You?

Updated July 2026

Intermittent fasting has been one of the most searched-for eating strategies for years, largely because so many people have tried everything else for weight loss and want to know if this is the answer. The honest verdict: it can help you lose weight, it may do a bit more than that, but it is not the breakthrough the headlines suggest, and it is not for everyone.

What is intermittent fasting?

It's an umbrella term for eating patterns that restrict calories to defined windows of time. "Intermittent fasting" means different things to different people, which is why I always ask patients to tell me exactly what they're doing. It ranges from time-restricted eating, where all your calories happen within a set number of hours each day, to longer stretches of withholding food for 24 hours or more. The most common protocols are the 16/8 method (all eating in an 8-hour window, fasting the other 16), Eat-Stop-Eat (a full 24-hour fast once or twice a week), and the 5:2 approach (eating normally five days, holding to 500–600 calories on two non-consecutive days).

Does intermittent fasting actually work for weight loss?

Yes and no, and the catch is the part people skip. If you skip meals without making up those calories later, you'll lose weight, plain and simple. But the approach fails the moment you compensate. I've seen plenty of patients who eat just once a day and remain significantly overweight, because they pack an enormous number of calories into that one meal. Shifting the timing of your eating without reducing the amount won't move the scale. And it does nothing for your health if the food inside your eating window is processed junk. You might lose weight and still be no better off.

Are there other benefits to fasting?

Possibly, and this is the genuinely interesting part. Studies suggest fasting can nudge several hormonal and cellular processes in a helpful direction. Human growth hormone can rise substantially, which supports fat loss and muscle maintenance. Insulin sensitivity improves and insulin levels can fall, which matters because impaired insulin sensitivity is central to type 2 diabetes, and lower insulin tends to bring lower LDL, higher HDL, and lower triglycerides. Fasting also appears to trigger cellular cleanup, where cells clear out old and dysfunctional proteins, and to shift the activity of genes tied to longevity and disease protection. It may be no accident that fasting shows up as a ritual in nearly every major religion, as though people figured out long ago that it does something for body and mind.

Is intermittent fasting good for your heart?

Here the honest answer is that we don't know for sure, and it may be very hard to ever say definitively, because there are too many variables to control. That hasn't stopped the media from seizing on individual findings. In 2024, a preliminary study presented to the American Heart Association linked eating within an 8-hour window to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death, which generated alarming headlines. But it followed around 20,000 people using only two days of self-reported diet data, with no accounting for the quality of the food eaten. As a counterweight, a small study in Nature Metabolism found fasting produced meaningful, healthy changes to organs including the heart, but only after three full days without food, far beyond the 16 to 24 hours most people practice. In other words, the scary study was weak, and the encouraging one didn't test what most fasters actually do.

Does any of this change my recommendation? No. Intermittent fasting remains a reasonable option for weight loss if you don't overeat when you're not fasting, and regardless of timing, the food itself still has to be high-quality and health-promoting.

Who should not try intermittent fasting?

It isn't appropriate for everyone. If you take diabetes medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, have ever had an eating disorder, or live with any advanced health condition, this approach is probably not for you. When in doubt, check with your healthcare provider before starting. Be prepared, too, for a rough start: headaches, lightheadedness, and weakness are common early on, though they tend to ease as your body adjusts.

In the end, there are many ways to lose weight, and people respond differently to each. What never changes is the foundation. You can't go wrong eating whole, plant-based foods in reasonable amounts. That's the real work, whatever the clock says. It's also why so many people report losing weight with Step One Foods without fasting or counting anything: eat real food made from high-quality ingredients to improve your health, and the weight tends to take care of itself.

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