Eating your breakfast 90 minutes later and dinner 90 minutes earlier – and yet still eating as much as you wish between those two times – could help you lose double the body fat as those sticking to usual meal times.
Although there are no restrictions on what or how much you eat, you’re dramatically reducing your ‘window’ when you can eat, and so you’re introducing a mini-fast and eating less because you’ll be less hungry, say researchers from the University of Surrey.
But although people lost body fat, more than half who took part in the experiment said that their lifestyles prevented them from following the new meal times beyond the 10 weeks of the trial.
For the experiment, the participants were put into two groups: those who altered their mealtimes and those who ate at their usual time. They kept food diaries during the trial, and researchers discovered that those who had a later breakfast and earlier dinner were eating less, even though there were no dietary restrictions. They said they felt less hungry and were also cutting back on snacks between meals.
The researchers also wonder if the longer fasting periods after eating dinner also contributed to the fat loss.
(Source: Journal of Nutritional Science, 2018; 7: doi: 10.1017/jns.2018.13)
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