>not always focused on weight loss

Lately, the new hotness has been on resetting the immune system by fasting.

>many if not most of the articles I've seen on intermittent fasting focus on the weight loss component. You may be stuck in your "informed person who actually reads" filter bubble again. It's a terrible burden ;-)

Ugh.

BTW I don't think fasting is a panacea. Seems like it can be a great tool, situationally, by educated patients for certain goals. The weight loss industry has discovered it. Here comes a tsunami of overgeneralizations, misrepresentations and misapplications.

The authors of that article are really only focused on helping diabetics manage their diabetes with no or very little insulin through a ketogenic diet.

The fact that they feel compelled to write an article about fasting, weightloss, and "nutritional ketosis" indicates that the tsunami is already coming.

People fast during Ramadan to develop empathy for others, for example.

The article and the lecture have a slightly different focus, in the lecture they get into some studies that examine metabolic damage from longer fasts.  It seems that suggestions that fasts longer than 48 hours can reduce lean body mass.

The day after Dr. Stephen Phinney's lecture Megan Ramos (who works with Dr. Jason Fung) outlines their fasting program and responds to Phinney's concerns. -- another high quality Low Carb Down Under lecture.