Time of Day You Eat Doesn't Impact Weight Loss

Preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020 showed eating early in the day and resisting late night meals does not affect weight in overweight adults with prediabetes or diabetes according to Medicalxpress.com. 

Researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine followed 41 overweight adults in a 12-week study. Most participants (90%) were Black women with prediabetes or diabetes, and average age of 59 years. Twenty-one of the adults followed a time-restricted eating pattern, limiting eating to specific hours of the day and ate 80% of their calories before 1 p.m. The remaining 20 participants ate at usual times during a 12-hour window, consuming half of their daily calories after 5 p.m. for the entire 12 weeks. All participants consumed the same pre-prepared, healthy meals provided for the study. 

According to the study’s author in Sciencedaily.com "We thought that the time-restricted group would lose more weight," Maruthur said. "Yet that didn't happen. We did not see any difference in weight loss for those who ate most of their calories earlier versus later in the day.”

While you may have seen studies before about how eating earlier resulted in weight loss, the Johns Hopkins researchers believe previous studies may have been flawed. According to Dr. Maruthur in Mdlinx.com, "Most prior studies have not controlled the number of calories, so it wasn't clear if people who ate earlier just ate fewer calories. In this study, the only thing we changed was the time of day of eating."

This latest study around time of day and eating was done with a small sample of participants. However, the careful controls showed it did not matter at what time of day the calories were consumed for weight loss.