Timing of Meals May Influence Weight-loss
From: Allison Winter, ENN.com
For anyone trying to lose weight,
one common suggestion is never eat after 7:00 pm. But why? Apparently if you
eat food close to your bedtime, it will not have enough time to burn off and is
more likely to be stored as fat. This recommendation can now be backed by new
research that suggests weight-loss plans should not only focus on what we eat, but
when we eat.
"This is the first large-scale
prospective study to demonstrate that the timing of meals predicts weight-loss
effectiveness," said Frank Scheer, PhD, MSc, director of the Medical
Chronobiology Program and associate neuroscientist at BWH, and senior author on
this study. "Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slower
weight-loss rate and lost significantly less weight than early eaters,
suggesting that the timing of large meals could be an important factor in a
weight loss program."
The study involved 420 overweight
participants who followed a 20-week weight-loss treatment program in Spain.
These participants were divided into early-eaters and late-eaters (those who
ate lunch before 3 p.m. and those who ate lunch after 3 p.m.) The researchers
chose lunchtime as the focus for the study because in this Mediterranean
culture, 40% of the total daily calories a person eats are consumed during this
meal.
As a result, researchers found that
late-eaters lost significantly less weight than early-eaters, and displayed a
much slower rate of weight-loss. Late-eaters also had a lower estimated insulin
sensitivity, a risk factor for diabetes. They also found that the late eaters
also consumed fewer calories during breakfast and were more likely to skip
breakfast altogether, another no-no in weight loss programs.
While weight-loss can be affected by
other factors, researchers determined that total calorie intake and
expenditure, appetite hormones, and sleep duration did not vary between groups,
therefore suggesting that the timing of the meal was an important and independent
factor in weight loss success.
"This study emphasizes that the
timing of food intake itself may play a significant role in weight
regulation" explains Marta Garaulet, PhD, professor of Physiology at the
University of Murcia Spain, and lead author of the study. "Novel
therapeutic strategies should incorporate not only the caloric intake and
macronutrient distribution, as it is classically done, but also the timing of
food."
The study was published in the
International Journal of Obesity.