Way back when - when Noom was only a nonsense word and Sirius was only a star - Irv Homer was the only Philadelphia radio talk-show host challenging listeners this way. He’d offer them a minute of uninterrupted airtime if they told him about themselves, but they had to talk about what makes them them.

Their hopes, beliefs, dreams, fears. In essence, their essence.

If the callers provided physical description, expressed likes and dislikes, or recited accomplishments, Homer hung up on them.

Most calls lasted less than 15 seconds because most people - sad to say - don’t really know themselves.

I believe to some measure this explains why so many people are in poor health today. For to be in control of your health, you need to know one thing above everything else.

Yourself.

And that’s particularly true when it comes to managing your weight.

To that end, it makes sense to review a study published in the April 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It finds that while intermittent-fasting diets work, they are not as staunch supporters claim: clearly superior to other types of calorie-restricted diets.

For 12 months, researchers at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China had 139 obese subjects eat 1500 to 1800 calories per day if they were male and 1200 to 1500 if they were female. Some only consumed food between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. while the others ate whenever.

To ensure compliance, all subjects photographed every bit of food they ate and kept food diaries. Despite these stipulations, 118 subjects saw the study to its end.

What the researchers discovered at that time was that the time-restricted dieters lost more weight on average, but that the 3.6-pound difference over 12 months was “not significantly different.” Equally as important, a comparative analyses of waist circumferences, BMI, body fat, body lean mass, blood pressure, and metabolic risk factors - such as blood glucose levels, blood lipid profiles, and sensitivity to insulin - found the same.

No significant differences.

Initially, time-restricted dieting was sold as the way not to count calories, maintain a healthy weight - and improve your overall health - provided you did your eating for no more than an eight-hour span each day. Yet when asked to assess the results of the NEJM study for a New York Times article, Dr. Ethan Weiss, a diet researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said they show “no benefit to eating in a narrow window.”

Weiss’s statement is especially noteworthy because of two other things he told the NYT.

He had found the early research on time-restricted dieting so promising initially that he became a “devotee.” For seven years, he had eaten only between noon and 8 p.m. - until his own study yielded results similar to the ones just published in the NEJM.

Weiss’s study permitted the 116 subjects to eat three meals a day, snacks if they got hungry, and whatever they wanted, but some only ate between noon and 8 p.m.

Those who did lost an average of 2 pounds in only two weeks, but the anytime eaters lost 1.5 pounds as well. After appropriate number crunching, that difference, just like the difference in the NEJM study, is statistically insignificant.

So what should be your takeaway be on all this? Maybe the same as what Dr. Louis J. Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York expresses in the NYT article.

That even though time-restricted dieting may be no better than calorie-restricted dieting, it gives “more options for success” because some people may simply “do better” if they keep things simple and eat only during a limited period of time each day.

So what do I think about all this?

That the impressive weight loss that often occurs in the first two weeks of a time-restricted diet results for the same reason impressive weight loss often occurs in the first two weeks of a low-carb diet. It’s the metabolic kickstart that comes temporarily from a sudden reduction of calories and a radical dietary change.

Do not discount the fleeting effect of a radical change in diet. Even the intentional overeating bodybuilders do to add muscle in a bulk-up phase increases caloric burn initially.

But more importantly, I’d like to think if Irv Homer were still around today, god rest his acerbic soul, and you called his show, you’d last the full minute. That you read all you can about health and fitness, give it great thought, and do not blindly follow the health-and-fitness status quo, the latest news-making research, or the diet of the month.

That you experiment on yourself intelligently, and as a result have an exceptional sense of both your physical and mental selves.