IF is a great way to burn fat off, and has a lot of other benefits to the human matabolism in terms of blood pressure, blood lipid parameters, fatty liver, inflammation, and immune system. Pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome markers.
It isn’t really a “diet”, but the experts saying diets don’t work are silly and should be ignored. Of course diets work. Indeed, they are the only thing that works.
Exercise is kind of a false hope, just a spoonful of peanut butter takes an hour or two of walking to burn off. The fact is a lot of people eat WAY, way more food than is required for their activity level or exertion. No amount of paychological expert mumbo jumbo or feeling good about the narrative is going to change that fact.
I like intermittent fasting because there is no necessity to change ones diet necessarily, if you want to eat Pizza or roast beef sandwiches go right ahead. One will naturally gravitate to lower carb and higher quality foods fairly quickly.
Actually, there’s a mid-ground: a low carb (less than 100 g)/high protein (40%) diet without fasting.