Doctor warns intermittent fasting is unhealthy, recommends five daily meals

Doctor says intermittent fasting is bad: 'no shortcuts'

Is intermittent fasting a legitimate tool for losing fat or a reckless practice to be abandoned? The answer depends on who you ask. One specialist, consulted privately, states that intermittent fasting is "not healthy at all." He argues that bingeing and working organs to the limit, then stopping for hours, is unnatural. He adds there are no shortcuts, weight loss should be very gradual, and the sensible approach is eating five times a day naturally, avoiding excess calories not burned.

This advice meets resistance. Alongside the specialist's words are two blocks: those distrustful of the expert and those claiming skipping meals is a risky trend. In between, about twenty testimonials with scales, blood tests, and stopwatches.

How many daily meals are physiological?

The five-meal pattern isn't a natural law. Some argue this schedule benefits the food industry more than diners, noting the coincidence between five meals and rising obesity isn't accidental.

Against scheduled snacking is a mechanical argument: eating every few hours means organs working non-stop, which isn't good. The analogy is agricultural: eating six times a day is for cows, not humans. In the middle are those favoring three fixed meals or arguing the number matters less than eating when hungry, not by clock.

Is humans adapted to hunger?

The evolutionary argument cuts both ways. Proponents note humans fasted for most of history, so bodies should adapt to reserves. Critics reply humans aren't great predators; they can't afford failed hunts, eating what they find daily, even in shifts. Fasting, they argue, stems from scarcity, not choice.

A third way emerges: admit normal fasting windows, like twelve hours between dinner and breakfast, reserving long fasts for special moments. It's not comfortable but generates few enemies.

Cases supporting 16, 18, and 23-hour fasts

Personal testimonies fuel this debate. One participant describes a month with one meal a day, 23 hours fasting, losing minimal muscle and 3kg of fat, huge from just 5kg overweight. Another claims a year with excellent blood tests and 32kg less. Protocols like 20/4 and 18/6 sustained for years appear, plus a crudovegan diet abandoned for cost and lack of quality fruit, not health.

Professional sports add data: training fasted at low intensity to improve fat usage and reduce body fat percentage. Teams doing this doesn't make it recommendable for everyone, but disproves it as an amateur gimmick.

The problem of fitting a day into one plate

Here the clash is arithmetic. Eating 100g of protein in one sitting causes guaranteed stomach pain for some, normal for others. The requested tool is a nutritional app: without measuring real intake, the discussion is futile.

The second front is glucose. Some argue the brain never needed added sugar: metabolism gets glucose from unrefined carbs, proteins, and fats. Direct sugar causes a spike, excess insulin stores fat, leading to a crash hours later. Defenders of classic splitting say the same calories can be split into three or four meals; the problem was never the number, but the total. One even offered a 2,000-calorie meal example.

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Ultimately, the only point where both sides touch is the clock: twelve hours without eating between dinner and breakfast seems fine to almost everyone. Anything beyond that depends on which specialist you see.