Intermittent Fasting and Exercise Together May Be More Effective for Weight Management, Study Finds - Video

Could combining intermittent fasting with exercise help people with obesity lose more weight and improve their heart health? A new clinical trial suggests that pairing time-restricted eating with supervised exercise may produce greater reductions in body weight and body fat while improving cardiorespiratory fitness, although its additional benefits for liver fat remain uncertain.

Published in Nature Communications, the study was conducted by researchers at the University of Granada, Spain, in collaboration with the Granada Institute for Biomedical Research and the Biomedical Research Network Center.

The TEMPUS trial involved 187 adults with obesity, approximately half of whom were women. Participants were randomly assigned to four groups: standard care, intermittent fasting, supervised exercise, or a combination of fasting and exercise.

Over 12 weeks, all participants received guidance on Mediterranean dietary habits and physical activity. Those assigned to intermittent fasting consumed their meals within an eight-hour daily window, while exercise groups participated in supervised strength training and high-intensity aerobic workouts.

The findings revealed that liver fat, measured using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), decreased across all four groups. However, neither intermittent fasting nor exercise, alone or combined, produced a statistically significant additional reduction in liver fat compared with standard care.

Interestingly, participants following intermittent fasting, with or without exercise, experienced approximately 2.2 kilograms greater weight loss than those receiving standard care.

Combining fasting with exercise also produced greater reductions in body fat compared with standard care and exercise alone. Both exercise groups demonstrated improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness.

Among participants with fatty liver at baseline, approximately 30% of those combining fasting and exercise no longer met the diagnostic criteria after treatment, compared with 6.5% receiving standard care.

However, one year after completing the intervention, differences in liver fat, body weight and body composition between groups were no longer apparent.

The findings suggest that combining intermittent fasting with structured exercise may improve short-term weight management and physical fitness.

REFERENCE: Clavero-Jimeno, A., et al. (2026). Effects of time-restricted eating and supervised exercise on intrahepatic fat and cardiometabolic health in adults with obesity: the TEMPUS randomized controlled trial. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-78625-3.