Losing weight is about when you eat

Want to lose weight?  Then focus on when you eat and not just what you eat.

The key could be in extending the overnight fasting period, the time between your last meal of the evening and breakfast the next day.

But part of the trick is in eating your dinner earlier and having an earlier breakfast, say researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.  And skipping breakfast altogether doesn’t help; the body just adapts to retain the fat stores it has.

They analysed data from more than 7,000 people aged between 40 and 65 whose diets and weight were tracked for five years.  Those who had the longest overnight fast between meals had put on the least amount of weight—if any at all—but it was also important to have an early dinner and an early breakfast the next day.  “We think this may be because eating earlier in the day is more in line with circadian rhythms and allows for better calorie burning and appetite regulation, which can help maintain a healthy weight,” said Luciana Pons-Muzzo, one of the researchers.

There were differences between the sexes, however.  The women tended to have lower BMI scores and were also more likely to follow a Mediterranean diet and drink less alcohol.

A small cluster of men was fasting for up to 17 hours each day and were eating their first meal of the day around 2pm, but they didn’t lose any weight, which suggests that fasting on its own isn’t the way to go.

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