Study: Meal Timing Does Not Affect Weight Gain
Have you ever wondered if there was a way to lose weight without eating less?
Some people have tried time-restricted eating, a type of diet in which you only eat during certain hours of the day — such as only between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. — but still eat as much as usual.
It's believed that time-restricted eating helps align our eating times with our bodies' natural rhythms.
However, losing weight may not be as simple as watching when we eat, as US scientists have found that the time between people's first and last meals of the day is not linked to any change in weight. A higher number of large and medium meals each day, however, is linked to weight gain, the scientists wrote in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The scientists studied 547 US adults, who used an app to report their eating habits over six months. The scientists looked at when they ate their first and last meals, their number of meals each day, and their weight and height records over an average of about six years.
People who ate one extra meal per day gained an average of 0.28 kilograms each year, they found.
The research shows that "meal frequency and meal sizes, rather than the timing of meals" is linked to long-term weight gain, the scientists wrote. This result does not support using time-restricted eating to lose weight, they said.
The study adds to the debate over whether time-restricted eating helps with weight loss. Some earlier studies found that it does help, while others said it has no effect.
However, studies finding weight loss linked to time-restricted eating also found that participants gradually got used to being hungry some of the time, and just naturally started wanting to eat less.
