Is the Timeframe of Restricted Eating Irrelevant?
Participants with obesity who engaged in any of three 8-hour, time-restricted eating schedules experienced weight loss and improvements in cardiovascular and metabolic health compared to participants with obesity in the Mediterranean diet control group. Members of the time-restricted eating groups also followed their regimens more faithfully than those on the Mediterranean diet. The findings, published in Nature Medicine, suggest time-restricted eating provides beneficial effects irrespective of the time of day individuals have their meals. The research addresses a long-standing question in the study of caloric restriction.
Numerous scientific studies have suggested restricting daily food intake to an 8-hour timeframe is an effective dietary intervention to address obesity, but the optimal time of day for eating remained in debate. To address the question, scientists from NIA, NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the Universities of Granada and Navarra in Spain designed an experimental study that included 197 men and women with obesity. The researchers compared three 8-hour eating windows simultaneously: morning (49 participants), afternoon (52 participants), and whenever they chose (47 participants). As long as 16 hours of fasting were maintained, the time-restriction eating schedule was acceptable. The control group (49 participants) followed the Mediterranean diet and did not engage in time-restricted eating.
Excerpted from NIH National Institute on Aging
