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Intermittent fasting
According to the International Food Information Council’s 2025 survey, 15 percent of Americans say they are currently doing intermittent fasting — up from 12 percent in 2023.
Every once in a while, I think I ought to have joined them.
I wrote an article here five years ago (if you were here then, I love you) suggesting it might improve memory — based on a study out of King’s College London — but I still never actually gave it a shot.
As it turns out, it may have been the right call — though probably not for the reasons I would have guessed.
More than 3,000 adults
Researchers at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health tracked more than 7,000 adults between the ages of 40 and 65, collecting data on meal timing, weight, lifestyle habits, and diet.
Five years later, more than 3,000 of those participants came back for follow-up measurements, and the researchers found that two habits were independently linked to lower BMI over that period:
The first was eating breakfast early in the day.
The second was extending the overnight fasting window — meaning finishing dinner early and not eating again until morning.
What was not linked to weight benefit: skipping breakfast as a form of intermittent fasting.
Among a subset of men who practiced intermittent fasting specifically by skipping breakfast and eating their first meal after 2 p.m., researchers found no advantage for body weight at all.
That group also tended to have other markers of less healthy living — more smoking, more drinking, less physical activity, and lower adherence to a healthy diet.
“There are different ways of practicing what is known as ‘intermittent fasting,’” explained Camille Lassale, ISGlobal researcher and senior co-author of the study. “What we observed in a subgroup of men who do intermittent fasting by skipping breakfast is that this practice has no effect on body weight.”
Chrononutrition
The researchers place their findings in an emerging field called chrononutrition — the study of not just what you eat, but when, and how meal timing interacts with the body’s internal clock.
The body’s circadian system is built around the rhythms of day and night and the physiological processes that accompany them.
Eating earlier in the day appears to align better with those rhythms, allowing for better calorie processing and appetite regulation.
Eating late and skipping breakfast works against that clock, regardless of how long the fasting window technically is.
Thus, a 16-hour fast that runs from 10 p.m. to 2 p.m. the next day may not be doing what people assume.
The same fasting window shifted earlier — finishing dinner at 7 p.m. and eating breakfast at 7 a.m. — appears to be a different thing biologically.
Earlier ISGlobal research connected the same early-eating patterns to lower risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, reinforcing the idea that timing has consequences that extend well beyond weight.
39 million people
The study was conducted entirely in Spain, which has a distinctive meal-timing culture. Dinner is typically eaten much later than in the United States. So, the baseline comparisons may not translate directly.
The research is observational, not a controlled experiment. So, it can’t prove that meal timing caused the differences in weight.
“Recommendations will have to wait for more robust evidence,” said Luciana Pons-Muzzo, one of the study’s lead researchers.
There are roughly 260 million adults in the United States. If the IFIC’s 15 percent figure is right, that works out to somewhere around 39 million people currently doing intermittent fasting.
If even a small portion of them have built their practice around skipping breakfast, this research ought to give them something to think about.
That said, the King’s College study I wrote about five years ago suggested intermittent fasting may have memory benefits that this research doesn’t address.
Maybe I’ll finally give it a try — just not the way most people apparently do it.
Other things worth knowing …
Axios: The ACLU is urging Louisianans to vote in U.S. House races even after Gov. Jeff Landry purportedly canceled them, as legal challenges move through the courts. The House candidates remain on the ballot for early voting; one assumes the point here is to create a record of people trying to vote for the judicial record.
NBC News: For months, President Trump portrayed the big new ballroom he’s building at the White House as a gift to the nation, courtesy of patriotic private donors. “No government funds,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last November. But, Republicans are now proposing $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to secure the ballroom.
The Financial Times: Global airlines have cut 2 million seats from their May schedules within the past two weeks, as concerns about fuel availability in the coming weeks intensify. Since the start of the Iran war in late February, the cost of jet fuel has doubled, forcing airlines to raise ticket prices, while the closure of Gulf airports that connected a third of European journeys to Asia has thrown global travel into disarray.
WSJ: Why the Collapse of Spirit Airlines Means Higher Fares for Everyone: Defunct budget airline had long been a competitive force on lower-cost tickets.
AP: Alberta separatists said Monday they have formally submitted 302,000 signatures to try to trigger a referendum on the province leaving Canada. It could go on a ballot as early as October, but a “yes” vote would not trigger independence automatically. Negotiations with the federal government would have to take place and Indigenous groups could use the courts to stop independence from happening.
CNN: White House border czar Tom Homan brushed off critics within President Trump’s base who say the administration is not deporting enough people, promising to “flood the zone” with immigration officers. “For the people out there saying ‘President Trump’s getting weak on mass deportation,’ you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Homan said, referring to such naysayers as “keyboard warriors.”
KDVR: A spring snowstorm is bringing inches of snow to Colorado, from the mountains to the Denver area and stretching across much of the state. The May storm comes after a warm and dry winter. In February, Denver had no measurable snow, only the second time on record the city was without snow for the month.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for years. Started in 2019 because my weight was getting out of control. I had tried every diet that had come down the pike ever since I was 13 years old. This is the only method that has worked for me where the weight I’ve lost has stayed off. My routine is a healthy breakfast every day some time between 8 and 9 usually. Were I not retired, I would adjust accordingly. Then I’ll eat a healthy, balanced lunch usually between 2-3; after which I’ll eat nothing else until the next morning. So I end up fasting 16-18 hours. One thing I haven’t done is deprive myself of things I enjoy. I just no longer go overboard eating a lot of sweets. I’ll have an occasional drink too but rarely the sweet, fizzy kind. I’m assiduous about drinking my two liters of water throughout the day and yes, the kidneys adjust. Knock wood, I’ve had a minimum of health issues and since I’m staring 80 in the face in 18 days I consider that a plus. I’ve come to understand my grandfather’s philosophy of eating to live instead of living to eat. Thus method has worked for me but it may not be for everyone. That’s what makes the world whirl.
Some things are NEVER going to be on my list. Skipping breakfast is right near the top.