When you eat is less significant than how much you consume

Following the eating patterns of more than 500 people for six years, a recent study performed by scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that rather than the time between meals, the size and frequency of meals have a greater impact on weight change. The study casts doubt on the efficacy of intermittent fasting as a weight loss technique.

A nutritional approach known as intermittent fasting, sometimes known as time-restricted feeding, involves eating all of your meals within a small window of time each day. A person may effectively fast for up to 18 hours a day during these periods, which may last anywhere from six to ten hours.

The effectiveness of intermittent fasting approaches in terms of causing real metabolic changes or merely making it simpler for a person to eat less food has been hotly contested from a weight-loss standpoint. When both groups were given the same calorie – controlled dietary restrictions, a research published last year, for instance, discovered equal weight reduction outcomes across time-restricted feeders and all-day eaters. Another previous study on intermittent fasting found that those who could only eat during eight hours each day automatically reduced their caloric intake by around 300 calories each day.

This latest study approached the subject matter differently. The researchers merely observed daily meal timings and quantities and connected them with weight reduction trends over a six-year period, rather than instructing the roughly 550 volunteers to follow a particular eating plan.

Each participant in the research used a smartphone app to log their sleep, wake up, and food times over the course of several weeks. This made it possible for the researchers to keep track of each subject’s first and final meals, as well as their wake-up and first meal times and their last meal time and sleep time.

The results showed there was no correlation between a person’s daily eating window and weight fluctuations throughout the six-year follow-up. Therefore, whether a person spread out their daily meals across a longer or a shorter interval had no impact on how much weight they would lose.

According to Wendy Bennett, the study’s principal investigator, there are no indications in the data that packing one’s meals into a limited window each day contributes to weight reduction.

Bennett said, “We are beginning to assume that spacing out meals throughout the day most likely doesn’t instantly result in weight reduction based on other studies that have come out, including ours.

The overall amount of medium and large meals a person had during the day, however, did affect weight. Therefore, these results show that eating smaller meals less often is what ultimately leads to weight reduction rather than their possibly being a physiological rationale for any weight-loss advantages to time-restricted feeding.

Time-restricted eating has been linked to improved circadian rhythms and a function in metabolic control, but the relationship was not found in the study’s sample of people with a wide variety of body weights, the researchers write. Importantly, we discovered a link between eating more often and in greater portions throughout the day and weight gain, showing that total calorie consumption is the primary cause of weight growth.

Naturally, all of this does not imply that someone can’t lose weight using intermittent fasting techniques. But what is becoming more and more obvious is that the weight reduction advantages that are occasionally observed with these eating habits may be predominantly brought on by a decreased calorie intake. And while calorie management can be improved with intermittent fasting, this doesn’t mean you can just eat as much as you want in a little six to eight-hour window each day and expect to lose weight.