Intermittent fasting came up quite strongly around Sept 2006 when I read about it in dr. Michael Eades' (Protein Power) blog. Turned out quite a few more people did it.
I've since then stopped eating 6 meals/day and had pretty good luck dieting with 3 meals/day.
But only by the next summer I tried the intermittent fasting by using the 'Fast till 5' method (there's a free e-book). Within 2 days I noticed to almost literally 'freeze' up. My fingers were like ice. Dropped that as a rock and did the 'Ramadan'like approach for another 2 months, viz. eat 10am/10pm every other day on rest days.
After 2 months I evaluated it and saw that while it was easy to eat less than I estimated to need, my maintenance had dropped by the same amount. Somehow one starts to slow down too much in day time. As soon as I added the 3rd meal back in, but at the end of the afternoon (4-6pm) maintenance shot back up again to normal & expected values.
This is a different experience from what I've read of many others.
In the end I've hence discovered my own perfect 'IF' , viz. a night-time fast (12hrs) plus a day time fast of 6 more hrs. No more worrying about food during regular work hours. So liberating. No more being hungry for more food late at night, but finding your allowance is already gone.
There's also a very interesting effect on abdominal fat.. I swear it has worked wonders on seeing visceral fat disappear. Even on this very moderate meal skipping method.
Probably the best effect is just alternating between normal & very low calorie intake, which doesn't stress the body as much as straight dieting. So, perhaps even a 'nibbling' approach would work, as long as you keep cals very low one day and high another day.
Don't remember if there's been research on that method.
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