A simple app and some meal support helped people in Japan lose weight by skipping calories a few days a week.

Other research shows that people who ate normally four days a week and cut calories on the other three lost weight, especially when they paid more attention to why they were eating. In one small study, folks in Japan who used a phone app and got free low-calorie meals once a week lost about a pound and a half more than those who just got general health advice. Another study found that this kind of intermittent fasting helped people stick with it better than daily calorie restriction, and they ended up losing more weight as a result. All of this points to digital support and structured meal plans making a real difference — but these were small studies, and the results might not look the same everywhere.