Nutrition and fitness are hardly a one-size-fits-all problem.
To take an example, my self, I am doing intermittent fasting and do moderate intensity exercise everyday for at least 30 minutes(gym, cycling, bouldering, etc). No matter what I do, I still have a muffin belly.
I also believed that for many years, that no matter what I do, I cannot control my weight.
Until one day I began to both weigh myself each day at the same hour with a precise digital scale and also weigh or measure by volume all the food that I eat.
After that moment, I reduced my weight by 2/3 and I have maintained easily any target weight. Even now, after some culinary orgy I easily gain a couple of pounds in a day, but then, by eating only measured quantities of food, I lose them after a week.
The reason why I have failed to control my weight during many years and most people also fail, is that if you eat until you are satiated, then it is guaranteed that you will not be able to control your weight, no matter how much exercise you do.
If you measure what you eat and you only eat pre-planned quantities, it is trivial to reduce how much you eat until you see that the next day you weigh slightly less (e.g. 100 grams less). Then you must keep eating such quantities until you reach the target.
If you do not respect your plan and you eat random extra snacks or drink sweet beverages, then of course you have no chance to control your weight.
It is much easier to follow a plan when you eat less meals per day, because they can be larger. When eating small meals many times per day it is far more difficult to stop after eating just a little. It is much easier to not start eating.
If you want to lose body fat you need a caloric deficit, squeezing a caloric surplus into a smaller window of the day isn’t going to do anything productive. Intermittent fasting itself has absolutely no benefit, it can only be useful if the fasting routine helps you maintain a caloric deficit.
To take an example, my self, I am doing intermittent fasting and do moderate intensity exercise everyday for at least 30 minutes(gym, cycling, bouldering, etc). No matter what I do, I still have a muffin belly.