Intermittent Fasting vs. Calorie Counting: How They Work
Both methods share the same goal of weight loss, but they go about it in different ways.
Intermittent Fasting
- Time-Restricted Eating You eat within a set window each day. For example, the 16:8 method involves fasting for 16 hours and eating during an eight-hour window.
- The 5:2 Method You eat normally for five days of the week and cut calories significantly on two nonconsecutive days. “Normal” eating still means choosing nutritious foods, rather than treating those days as an opportunity to overeat, says Connor.
- Alternate-Day Fasting You might fast every other day. A fasting day consists of eating 25 percent of your caloric needs, while on non-fasting days you eat normally.
Calorie Counting
With calorie counting, the focus is on the amount of calories you consume, regardless of when you eat, says Joseph Eid, MD, a board-certified surgeon and medical director of the bariatric surgery and medical weight loss program at Cumberland Bariatric Institute at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital in Somerset, Kentucky.
Once you have your target, you record what you eat and drink in a food journal or app and compare your total with your daily goal, says Sara Riehm, RD, certified specialist in obesity and weight management and founder of Sara Riehm Nutrition Counseling & Consulting, LLC, a virtual private nutrition practice to help women achieve weight loss.
“Ideally, you’d want to be close to the calorie goal each day,” Riehm says. Tracking what you eat can make you more aware of your intake and help you make adjustments throughout the day to stay closer to your target, she notes.
