Disclaimer: None of the information in this article constitutes medical advice. All statements are merely the opinion of the writer(s). We recommend that patients follow their doctor’s guidance in regard to fasting and weight loss.
DoFasting is a weight loss program centered on the practice of intermittent fasting. The brand has a paid phone app to track your fasting, a “smart scale,” and several supplements for weight loss.
In this article we’ll review DoFasting's app, scale and supplements to give our take on whether they're likely to be effective for weight loss, or if they're a waste of money. We'll also review medical research on intermittent fasting generally to determine if it causes weight loss.
Does Intermittent Fasting Cause Weight Loss?
Since the DoFasting program is predicated on intermittent fasting, it makes sense to first evaluate whether intermittent fasting works, because if not, it certainly would be illogical to purchase an intermittent fasting app.
A systematic review of intermittent fasting’s effects on weight loss was published in 2020 in a leading Canadian medical journal. The researchers analyzed 41 individual medical trials on the topic.
Intermittent fasting was found to be very effective for weight loss. In the 27 trials which tracked weight, every group lost weight on average. The weight loss ranged from 0.8% of baseline weight to 13% of baseline weight from the beginning to the end of the trials, which lasted from 2 to 26 weeks.
One of the surprising findings was that “weight loss occurred regardless of changes in overall caloric intake.” This suggests that intermittent fasting has positive effects on metabolism that cause individuals to burn more calories at rest.
We will conclude from the research that intermittent fasting is effective for weight loss.
DoFasting App Review
The most popular part of the DoFasting program is their weight loss app. It costs $11 per month on a 6-month plan, and $33 per month on a 1-month plan.
The app offers different fasting options, such as “beginner-friendly” options like a 14-hour fast. As the user advances and becomes more accustomed to fasting, there are options such as a 24-hour fast that the app may suggest, for up to two total days per week.
This approach seems reasonable to us, because there isn’t yet a medical standard for the most effective type of intermittent fasting. The medical review cited in the previous section included studies on various types of fasting: 16-hour fasts, alternate day fasts, “5 and 2” day fasts and more.
DoFasting's app also offers workout programs and healthy meal recipes, which may be a nice perk but we feel to be relatively unnecessary as these are easily accessible online for free.
We don’t see any harm in using the DoFasting app, but we find it to be somewhat of a waste of money. Tracking hours fasting is very easily achieved manually. If an individual decides to start intermittent fasting for 16 hours per day, all they need to do is remember (or note down) the last time they ate.
In fact, tracking intermittent fasting is much simpler than tracking calorie intake, which many people who are dieting already do without an app. Tracking calories can be cumbersome and requires food scales, and multiple data inputs to a phone. Tracking hours fasted is easy in comparison.
Put simply, we do not recommend DoFasting's app because we haven't seen any clinical evidence that it's more effective than tracking fasting manually, which is easy to do.
DoFasting Smart Scale Review
DoFasting sells a “Smart Scale” that the brand claims can track various metabolic parameters, such as metabolic age, skeletal muscle mass and visceral fat.
We don’t find any of this information to be very useful, and we don’t believe it provides much value above a basic weight scale (though it’s great for branding).
Metabolic age, which isn’t a clinically-defined term, seems to measure an individual's base metabolic rate, which means how many calories they burn at rest. We can't find any proof of the accuracy of this device on DoFasting's website.
We also are unable to locate any proof that this scale accurately tracks measures such as visceral fat, as the brand claims it does.
Similar to the app, we don’t see any harm in using this device, we just find it to be a waste of money because the benefits beyond a regular scale are unclear to us. Losing weight improves all metabolic parameters for overweight patients, and a regular scale which likely costs a fraction of the price of the Smart Scale ($99) can track weight just fine.
For people on an intermittent fasting diet, tracking weight loss is the most important thing in our opinion. Secondary parameters like visceral fat loss will occur with weight loss, so we don't see any point in tracking these secondary attributes directly.
DoFasting Appetite Suppressant Supplement Review
DoFasting sells two dietary supplements, and the most popular is their Appetite Suppressant supplement.
The supplement itself has one active ingredient: glucomannan. This is a type of fiber that we discussed at length in our review of weight loss supplement Leanbean. It is proven to be effective for inducing weight loss, but no more so than other types of fiber.
The fiber dose is only 2 grams (g) which is relatively low, especially for the $62.99 price.
DoFasting Appetite Suppressant also contains inactive ingredients like natural flavor, which is a broad descriptor that encompasses a wide variety of chemical compounds. We recommend avoiding supplements that contain "natural flavor," because it's impossible to assess the safety of the flavoring agents used unless they're specified.
The supplement also contains citric acid which is a flavoring and preservative agent we recommend avoiding, because it's often manufactured from a fungus and has contributed to whole-body inflammatory conditions in some patients according to several medical case reports.
We do not recommend this supplement due to the additive ingredients.
DoFasting Apple Cider Vinegar Supplement Review
DoFasting sells an apple cider vinegar (ACV) gummies supplement, which the brand claims can “improve your fasting experience” without explaining how.
We recently published a research article proving the lack of health benefits of apple cider vinegar gummies. The dosage of ACV in gummies is typically too low to provide health benefits, and this trend holds true with DoFasting’s product that only provides 500 milligrams (mg) of ACV.
As our review detailed, apple cider vinegar does have some general health and metabolic benefits, mostly due to its acetic acid content, but the minimally-effective dose used in medical studies appears to be equivalent to around 15,000 mg. The dose in DoFasting’s supplement is 3% of this amount.
DoFasting’s Apple Cider Vinegar Gummies also contains added sugar, which we find to be a very questionable additive for a fasting supplement.
We do not recommend this supplement, and do not believe it will improve fasting or weight loss outcomes in any way.
Our Clean Weight Loss Picks
There are food-based nutrients which have been shown in medical studies to be effective for weight loss.
Dietary fiber was shown in a medical review published in The Journal of Nutrition to cause 16 pounds of weight loss in 6 months when combined with moderate caloric restriction (750 calories per day below baseline).
Supergut Fiber Mix is our top fiber supplement, because it contains three different types of fiber powder, and retails for only $1.75 per serving at a subscription rate.
MCT oil was shown in a meta-study to cause more than one pound of weight loss over 10 weeks. This equates to potential annualized weight loss of 6 pounds per year with less than one tablespoon's worth of MCT oil per day.
Bulletproof MCT Oil is our top MCT oil product, because the only ingredient is MCT oil derived from coconuts. and it currently costs only $15.50 for over a month's worth of product.
Ginger intake "significantly decreased body weight" according to a 2019 meta-study on ginger and weight loss that analyzed data from 14 clinical trials.
Pique La Ginger is our top ginger product, because it's an organic tea in convenient crystallized form, and all that's needed is to pour the powder into a glass and add hot water.
All three of the products mentioned in this section are entirely free of additive ingredients that we consider to be unhealthy or unsafe.
DoFasting Pros and Cons
Here's our take on the pros and cons of DoFasting.
Pros:
- Likely effective
- Relatively cheap
- More convenient than manually tracking fasting
Cons:
- Waste of money
- Smart Scale doesn't have proven accuracy
- Poorly formulated supplements
