From what I’ve read fasting is more of an intervention for metabolic issues, helping to reduce insulin levels more dramatically. The study you linked to seems to support this.

> However, FBS improved insulin sensitivity, with significant reductions in fasting insulin

The issue, and why I think we’ve seen several high profile fasting advocates stop, is because they weren’t metabolically unhealthy, but were on extreme fasting protocols as if they were.

The way I read it, if you’re significantly overweight and have high insulin levels (type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes), fasting can help get things under control quickly. However, once a person has regained metabolic flexibility and health, moving to something more balanced is likely a good idea. Just avoiding going back to a lifestyle that leads to chronically high insulin levels. Some amount of fasting probably makes sense, as has been practiced by most major religions in some form for thousands of years, but not to the same extreme as during the intervention.

Losing weight is only a bonus for me, you could lose weight by following a diet that exclusively consists of eating a cube of sugar every XX minutes if you wanted to. Where fasting shines is that it helps control hunger and energy levels. A normal person in the west is basically always in a fed state (bf, lunch, snack, dinner) to the point it's hard for most people to differentiate thirst from hunger from boredom.

From the same article abstract:

>However, [fasting-based strategies] improved insulin sensitivity, with significant reductions in fasting insulin (-7.46 pmol/L, p = 0.02) and HOMA-IR (-0.14, p = 0.02)

I've seen conflicting evidence that fasting triggers autophagy as well - I've seen some that suggest that it starts after just 18 hours and some that you'd have to fast for a week before you'd actually see autophagy kick in.