Fasting diets do not make much difference to weight loss compared to a traditional calorie-controlled diet, a study has found.

Regimes like the 'Every Other Day Diet' and the 5:2 diet have proved popular, with proponents eating just 500 calories on fasting days. On other days dieters can eat what they would like.

But researchers at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who examined 100 obese adults, found that after one year those who fasted every other day had lost six per cent of their bodyweight on average - not significantly different from the daily calorie restriction group, who lost 5.3 per cent of their bodyweight.