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Based on the research I've read, it's better to completely fast than do calorie restriction. There are benefits to autophagy that don't happen under simple calorie restriction. Autophagy is the breakdown of cells. Basically the body eating itself. The thing is, it prioritizes damaged cells and cellular "junk" first. This has a healing effect. Other studies have shown an increase in stem cells regeneration from fasting.
I've done various times. 5 days, 10 days, and 18 days. 0 calories. Just water. Works really well. Makes you feel younger and really on fire when you resume eating. Sounds really hard, but once you get past the first 2 days it is super easy. First fast is hard, but if you do it periodically, then fasting becomes really easy. Especially if you already follow a ketogenic diet (low carb, low/moderate protein).
Also, people who did complete fasting (0 calories) reported less hunger cravings than people who did 500-1500 calorie/day diets. It is suspected this is because the body adapts (ketoadaptation) and goes into fat burning mode for fuel. When you half ass it and just do calorie restriction your body doesn't really transition into fat burning (lipolysis). Having extended windows of low insulin is really the controlling factor.
Also, starving is a little bit of a misnomer. The body burns fat for fuel when you don't have exogenous calories (calories from food that you eat). When you go through ketoadaptation you are burning fat. There's no difference between eating fat from your mouth or taking it from your fat stores. Before ketoadaptation you ARE actually starving though. Food goes to glucose and amino acids. Glucose gets used for energy. Excess is stored in the liver. If there is still too much it is converted to fat. When glucose stores are depleted the body will attempt to burn fat. If you aren't trained to burn fat though there's nothing there. It might burn a tiny bit of protein in order to synthesize glucose (gluconeogenesis) but it can only do it so much. The time it takes to get into ketoadaptation varies depending on how healthy you are and seems to be correlated with insulin resistance. If you always eat carbs it will take some time to learn how to burn fat. The body adjusts though. When it does, fasting is super easy.
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