A friend messaged me last month to say she’d started skipping breakfast and eating all her meals between noon and eight. She wanted to know if I thought it would work. My honest answer was that it depends entirely on what ‘work’ means for her, and on how her body and her week actually run. Intermittent fasting has become one of those topics people ask me about at the ocean pool after a swim, usually with a mix of hope and suspicion.
Not so long ago, going without food for a stretch was tied to religious practice or to the kind of ‘cleanse’ that promised to reset everything. It has since travelled a long way from there, and I think it’s worth looking at plainly rather than as a miracle or a fad.
How a religious practice became a diet trend
Fasting stepped into the mainstream largely on the back of a television series by the British medical journalist Dr Michael Mosley, who popularised the 5:2 approach: five days of ordinary eating and two days each week capped at around 500 calories. From there it splintered into a whole family of methods, most of them built around shrinking the window in which you eat rather than counting every mouthful.
You’ve probably heard the shorthand. The 16:8, where you eat within an eight-hour window. Alternate-day patterns. The occasional full-day fast. They share one idea: give the body longer gaps between meals and let overall intake fall as a result.
Plenty of health benefits get attached to these patterns online, and some of them may well hold up over time. But a lot of the bolder claims are still reported rather than settled. Healthdirect’s plain-language guidance on fad and popular diets is a sensible place to start if you want the calm version rather than the marketing one.
What a dietitian actually told us
When Golden Door hosted Dr Kerith Duncanson, an Accredited Practising Dietitian with more than twenty-five years behind her, she was refreshingly unromantic about the whole thing. Her line, as I remember it, was that fasting isn’t magic and it isn’t poison. It’s one tool, and like any tool it suits some hands better than others.
She pointed out that for certain people and certain temperaments, a structured eating window can genuinely help. In her experience that tends to include:
- People carrying more weight than is comfortable for them, who feel steadier with a clear plan to follow rather than vague ‘eat less’ advice
- Those who already know roughly what a balanced day of eating looks like and just want a simple way to trim the excess
- Anyone trying to break a habit of grazing or reaching for the same trigger foods out of routine
- People who suspect they eat more than their activity level really calls for and want a gentle brake on appetite
I liked that she framed it around honesty with yourself. The window only helps if what you eat inside it is reasonable. Skipping to noon and then having a large plate of chips isn’t the point, and Dr Duncanson was clear that overall nutrition has to stay front and centre.
The people she’d steer away from it
This is the part I wish more articles led with. Dr Duncanson was just as specific about who intermittent fasting is not for, at least not without proper supervision. Her list of people who should be cautious, or avoid it, included:
- Anyone managing complex medical conditions or on medications, unless a doctor and dietitian are guiding it
- People recovering from illness, whose bodies need steady fuel
- Those who experience hypoglycaemia, or low blood glucose
- People with higher, consistent nutrient needs, including women who are pregnant or breastfeeding
- Athletes, particularly where holding onto muscle matters for the sport
- People with inflammatory conditions, for whom long full-day fasts aren’t advised, though shorter same-day gaps may be fine
- Anyone who simply prefers trimming back a little each day, where a steady moderation approach may suit better
Reading that list, you can see why ‘it worked wonders for my neighbour’ is such a weak reason to try anything. Your neighbour isn’t pregnant, isn’t training for a marathon, isn’t on the medication you might be on. The general advice on eating well from the Australian Dietary Guidelines still applies whether or not you fast, and it’s a better foundation than any single trend.
Does it beat other approaches?
Here’s the bit that surprised the room when Dr Duncanson said it. On the research so far, fasting appears to be about as effective as other forms of calorie restriction for weight and metabolic health, provided nutrition stays a priority and individual medical needs are respected. In other words, the eating window itself isn’t a shortcut. It’s mostly a structure that helps some people eat a little less without thinking about it constantly.
That lands for me. The people I know who’ve stuck with it aren’t succeeding because the clock is enchanted. They’re succeeding because a rule they can remember beats willpower they have to summon at every meal. And the ones who’ve quietly dropped it usually did so because it fought with their family dinners, their training, or their mood.
How your body feels is data too
I’m a wellness writer, not a doctor, so I won’t pretend to tell you what fasting will do inside your cells. What I can say is that how you feel through a change like this is worth paying attention to. When I’ve experimented with a later first meal, I notice quickly whether I’m calm and clear or irritable and foggy by mid-morning. That feedback matters more than any headline.
Sleep is part of the picture too. Eating very late or going to bed genuinely hungry can nudge your rest around, and rest shapes appetite the next day. I’ve written before about the tangle between sleep and weight, and it’s relevant here. If a fasting window leaves you wired at night, that’s information, not a personal failing.
For anyone who tends to overthink food, I’d gently suggest reading up on the basics of good nutrition first. A pattern of eating only helps if the meals inside it are nourishing. And if stress is the thing driving your snacking rather than hunger, some honest ways to lower daily stress may do more than any window ever could.
Where I’d land on it
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that intermittent fasting is neither the secret weapon the headlines promise nor the danger some make it out to be. It’s a structure. For a person who thrives on structure, eats reasonably well, and has no medical reason to avoid it, it can be a tidy way to keep intake in check. For plenty of others it’s an unnecessary hurdle, and there’s no shame in choosing the slower, steadier path instead.
If you’re curious, the sensible move is to talk it over with your GP or an Accredited Practising Dietitian who knows your history, rather than a stranger on the internet, myself included. You can find level-headed background through Better Health Channel before you decide. And whatever you land on, keep the food itself good. That part never goes out of fashion.
— Tanya Pryce, Golden Door Living
