When it comes to losing weight, many of us think what eat instead when Eat. But does meal timing matter? New research suggests it really makes a difference.
In this study, researchers looked at 90 obese people and found that practicing timed meals earlier in the day was associated with greater weight loss, weight gain, and weight loss, compared with eating in 12-hour or longer time slots. We wanted to see if it had an effect on fat loss, cardio-metabolic health.
The results showed that early timed meals were effective for weight loss.
With this in mind, should meal timing be part of your weight loss strategy? Here’s what health experts say.
Relationship between weight loss and timed eating
There are still many open questions in this research.
“While we agree with the spirit of this experiment to see if it’s better not to eat all day from early morning until late at night, there are some problems with this study,” he says. Dr. Stacey J. Stephensona prominent leader in functional medicine, Vibrant: A Breakthrough Program to Revitalize, Reverse Aging, and Radiance.
“This study compared eating within an eight-hour window from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on most days of the week and fasting after 3:00 p.m. noon to 8 pm, etc. Instead, they compared it to a group that did not practice a timed diet and fasted for no more than 12 hours a night. .”
The study explains why eating earlier in the day can be more effective for weight loss, saying your body burns more calories earlier in the day. Without comparing it to a late time-restricted window, the study doesn’t really look at whether this early eating period makes any difference to weight loss. Only that people lost more weight when they restricted their meals to eight hours. Would eating later in the day be just as effective? added Dr. Stephenson.
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Does eating less during the day tend to eat less? Again, the study isn’t entirely clear. Additionally, other studies, including a 2022 study, New England Journal of Medicine, For low-calorie diets, timed eating was shown to have no weight loss or other benefits compared to just cutting calories without time restrictions.
In addition, this research may also influence the idea that strictly enforced, timed diets are necessary to lose weight. In some people, time-restricted eating can lead to binge eating and episodes of binge eating, Dr. Stevenson says. It’s a case of research on both sides of the issue that shows it’s likely to be beneficial to people. It’s also worth considering that this style of eating can be difficult if you’re supporting a family and can interfere with many people’s social activities.
Dr. William Lee, Physician, scientist, president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, Eat to beat disease: New science on how your body can heal itself The study does not conclude that there is an “ideal time frame,” it simply explains that shorter eating windows lead to weight loss. In fact, both 12- and 8-hour meal times during the day were beneficial.
Interestingly, the shorter time slot group started eating earlier at 7:00 am and stopped eating at 3:00 pm. This short meal time means your body is effectively starting a fast from mid-afternoon to early the next morning, for a total of 16 hours.
A lab study in mice that looked at this same period of time (16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating) showed it could lead to weight loss, said Dr. Li. . The reason is that insulin levels in the blood decrease during fasting. Insulin normally prevents lipolysis, the process of burning fat for energy. This is what led to the “16/8” intermittent fasting trend, research by Jamshed and others. al. supports this timeframe.
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Dr. Li says there are a few things to be aware of here.
• Both 16 and 12 hour fasting resulted in clinically meaningful weight loss. Both worked, but the 16 hour fast resulted in almost 50% weight loss.
• The 16 hour group began eating early in the morning and stopped eating mid-afternoon. I’m not sure if starting late in the morning, say 11am, and ending in the evening, say 7pm, would produce the same result.
• In this study, there were dropouts in the group with shorter meal windows due to failure to adhere to the meal. Practicality therefore plays into this kind of more restrictive eating pattern.
• Both groups received nutritional guidance and were asked to exercise regularly, reducing their daily caloric intake. These are all factors that can affect weight loss success.
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An effective holistic strategy for weight loss
What really works best is to follow your body’s natural hunger.
To do this, you first need to clean up your diet, explains Dr. Stevenson. When you switch to a diet of mostly whole foods, you usually start to recognize your actual hunger, often within 8 hours (or 10 hours or so). 6 hours). ) naturally open the window.
“For example, you may not want to eat breakfast, or you may not want to eat dinner, or you may eat a lot of breakfast and not need lunch,” Dr. Stevenson says. I take it as a signal that I don’t need it, so I skip that meal. It’s about choosing food.”
In short, humans don’t have to be eating all the time, but many do for reasons other than hunger, such as boredom, anxiety, food availability, or pleasure. But if it happens consistently, you can take in more energy than you need and store that energy as fat.
Future studies may compare timed eating windows at different times of the day, thereby providing more evidence that eating earlier helps weight loss slightly than eating later. We may have evidence, but we need to see those results.
Diet, weight gain and weight loss are highly individual and influenced by many external and internal factors, explains Dr. Stevenson. It’s a more reliable way to help your body reach and maintain a healthy weight.
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- JAMA Internal Medicine: “Efficacy of an early time-restricted diet for weight loss, fat loss, and cardiometabolic health in obese adults.”
- Dr. Stacie J. Stephenson is a prominent leader in functional medicine, Vibrant: A Breakthrough Program to Revitalize, Reverse Aging, and Radiance
- Dr. William Li, Physician, Scientist, President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation, Eat to beat disease: New science on how your body can heal itself
- Italian Journal of Eating Disorders and Obesity: “Regular eating rather than intermittent fasting is the best strategy for healthy eating management”
- New England Journal of Medicine: “calorie restriction with or without timed meals during weight loss”
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