Want to Lose Body Fat? Eat a Late Breakfast and Early Dinner
Research shows that counting calories doesn’t work. A small study finds that time-restricted eating can do what other diets cannot — help you lose body fat.
It turns out, it’s not just what we eat that matters for our health, but also when we eat. Many Americans eat throughout the day. We force our bodies to keep pumping out insulin as we metabolize a steady stream of food.
Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Policy
Now, a small study in the Journal of Nutritional Science suggests that time-restricted eating can help us reduce our body fat.
It’s not about counting calories or changing what you eat. Time-restricted eating simply means shortening the window of time in which you eat during the day.
In the 10-week University of Surrey study, researchers split 13 healthy volunteers into two groups:
Neither group had eating restrictions. Both groups kept food diaries and gave blood samples over the 10 weeks.
At the end of this study, the time-restricted eating group shaved four and a half hours off their eating time and:
The control group did not.
The time-restricted eating schedule accomplished what many popular diets cannot: fat loss.
The study participants found it hard to stick to their restrictive eating schedule. After all, family and social obligations can interfere with fasting.
But 43 percent said they would consider continuing the program if eating times were more flexible.
What many of my patients do is simply stop eating at 6 p.m., or eat an early dinner and avoid calories in the evening.
Some of my patients combine intermittent fasting with time-restricted eating because it’s an easier approach. They fast on a few non-consecutive days each week and do time-restricted eating on the other days.
Because this small study was preliminary, we need large-scale human studies to confirm its findings. However, the results agree with what other studies have found:
Multiple studies have proven that counting calories does not work.
Let’s focus on the hours in which we’re actually eating instead.
By Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD