Intermittent fasting (IF) has become a popular weight-loss strategy over the past decade.
Yet a new study from Texas A&M University published in the journal Appetite suggests that it could raise the risk of binge-eating and other food disorders.
Author Jordan Schueler, M.S., a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M, started developing the new study in 2019.
“There wasn’t much information about the psychological effects of intermittent fasting — only its impact on medical outcomes like weight and cholesterol,” she told Fox News Digital in an email.
“I was interested in seeing whether this specific form of time-restricted dieting, where people may ignore their hunger cues for extended periods of time, could also induce binge-eating.”
There are several types of intermittent fasting — but they all follow the same concept of alternating between fasting and eating.
With a time-restricted approach, the dieter only eats during a certain window. For example, with the 16/8 method, the person fasts for 16 hours and then can eat within an eight-hour span, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Other versions involve fasting for a full 24 hours once or twice per week — or only consuming limited calories on fasting days.
The researchers involved in the new study looked at a sample of nearly 300 undergraduate college students.
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Schueler said they used “a recruitment strategy that optimized the number of participants in our sample who were currently engaging in intermittent fasting, as those were the people we were most interested in.”
She added, “We also included people in the sample who previously engaged in IF — and those who never had before.”
Among the participants, 23.5% were currently participating in intermittent fasting, 16% had tried it in the past and 61% had never engaged in it.
They were asked to complete questionnaires about their intermittent fasting status, impulsivity, intuitive eating, disordered eating behaviors and mindful eating.
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Those who had done intermittent fasting in the past, the study found, were more likely to engage in binge-eating than those who had never fasted.
This went against the researchers’ expectations that current fasters would be more likely to binge.
“One explanation is that those who are actively engaging in IF may still be ‘successfully’ engaging in rigidity and self-control around their eating behaviors,” Schueler said.
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“However, it is common to experience a rebound effect following severe caloric restriction, during which binge-eating occurs. Our finding suggests that although IF does not appear to be a risk factor for binge-eating while one is actively engaged in the diet, it may have lasting effects on one’s relationship with food.”
The study also found that intermittent fasters were less likely to tune into their internal hunger and fullness cues — and tended to give themselves less permission to eat.
“In other words, intermittent fasters are far from intuitive eaters,” said Schueler. “Rather than relying on their body’s inherent wisdom, their intake is determined by external rules.”
The study’s findings didn’t surprise Lauren Harris-Pincus, a registered dietitian nutritionist who has been practicing for more than 25 years in the New York/New Jersey area.
She agreed that intermittent fasting could promote unhealthy habits by suppressing internal hunger cues.
“Anything that forces the body into an abnormal eating pattern holds the potential for disordered eating,” she told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“If you’re starving at 11 a.m. but feel you have to wait until 12:00 until your ‘eating window’ opens up, that’s kind of ridiculous. It’s simply not logical or efficacious to ignore your body’s signals for the sake of something that’s quite faddish.”
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For those who already have a poor body image, intermittent fasting could quite easily trigger disordered eating, warned Tanya Freirich, a registered dietitian nutritionist. She practices as The Lupus Dietitian and serves people with autoimmune diseases.
“If someone already has a poor body image, has difficulty tuning into their body’s hunger and fullness cues, or has a tendency to use food as a coping mechanism, intermittent fasting can further deteriorate the ability for that person to intuitively eat,” she told Fox News Digital in an email.
Added Freirich, “Intermittent fasting is a set of external rules that can guide people to listen less to their body’s cues. Disregarding the body’s signals can make it more and more difficult to discern those messages in the future.”
Freirich does believe intermittent fasting can be a healthy and sustainable lifestyle for some people — particularly if they eat their first meal early in the day to fuel their activity and set their eating window at eight hours or longer.
For example, this could mean having breakfast at 8 a.m. and dinner at 6 p.m. — an eating window of 10 hours, with 14 hours of fasting.
However, she does not recommend the technique for people who have diabetes, are prone to low blood pressure, are pregnant or lactating — or who have a history of disordered eating.
Some experts, including Harris-Pincus, don’t find intermittent fasting to have much additional long-term weight-loss benefit over standard calorie restriction.
A previous study from April 2022 even found that time-restricted eating did not lead to a greater reduction in body weight, body fat or metabolic risk factors among obese patients.
Freirich said those who are engaging in intermittent fasting should watch out for red flags that may indicate they’re veering into disordered eating territory.
One example is becoming overly rigid about the timing of meals. People may also feel anxious, guilty or ashamed if they cannot follow the time constraints.
Another warning sign: People may find themselves withdrawing from important social events because those events take place outside the designated eating window.
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Or, a focus on eating may be some people’s dominant thought throughout the day.
People who feel ill, weak or dizzy due to hunger may also be at risk of disordered eating.
“Another sign is consuming so much during the eating window that they feel uncomfortably full or stuffed — which can indicate a cycle of restriction and bingeing,” said Freirich.
The Texas A&M study does have some limitations. Schueler noted that the sample size was small and not very diverse in regard to gender identity, age, race/ethnicity, education or socioeconomic status.
“Therefore, we do not know if we would see the same results among individuals from more diverse or historically marginalized populations,” she said.
“More research is needed in order to generalize these findings.”
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Schueler also pointed out that individuals took the surveys at one point in time — as opposed to across a span of years.
“This means we cannot know whether intermittent fasting causes binge-eating or vice versa,” she said.
“What is needed to determine this are more longitudinal studies that follow people over time to see when the binge-eating develops — and observe the different factors that contributed to it.”
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