Dinner at 5pm? New research shows that eating early and within a 10-hour window is healthier

Researchers have provided more evidence that eating earlier in the day can be good for you, and eating all of your meals within a 10-hour window can also be healthier.

What can be made of this latest wave of nutrition research? Eat breakfast and try to limit your meals closer to the 10-hour window.

A reason to eat earlier? Participants who ate their meals four hours later were hungrier, burned calories more slowly and had body changes that promoted fat growth, according to a study by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The study was published this week in the Cellular metabolism.

“In this study, we asked, ‘Does the time we eat matter, all else being equal?'” first author Nina Vujavich, a researcher in the hospital’s sleep and circadian disorders department, wrote in the study description. hospital website. “And we found that eating four hours later has a significant effect on our hunger levels, how we burn calories after eating, and how we store fat.”

There were 16 researchers overweight patients eat the same meals on two schedules, one with a meal earlier in the day and another about four hours later. (For example, a member of the early group may eat at approximately 9 am, 1 pm, and 5 pm; another group at 1 pm, 5 pm, and 9 pm)

Participants recorded their hunger and appetite. Researchers gathered blood sampleslevels of body temperature and energy expenditure, and adipose tissue samples of some subjects.

Researchers say eating late makes you more than twice as likely to feel hungry. When study participants ate later in the day, they had lower levels of the hormone leptin, which is present when we feel full, the researchers said.

Genetic tests have also suggested that fat growth is accompanied by later eating. A late meal resulted in burning 60 fewer calories, the study found.

“We wanted to test the mechanisms that might explain why late eating increases the risk of obesity,” senior author Frank Scheer, director of the medical chronobiology program in Brigham’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, said in a statement.

The study is small, but it was specifically designed to assess the effect of the diet on the body. The researchers hope to expand on the findings.

“This study shows the effect of eating late versus early. Here, we isolated these effects by controlling for confounding variables such as caloric intake, physical activity, sleep, and lighting, but in real life, many of these factors can be influenced by the timing of meals,” Shire said. “In larger studies where strict controlling for all of these factors is impossible, we must at least consider how other behavioral and environmental variables modify these biological pathways that underlie obesity risk.”

Should breakfast be the biggest meal?

Another study published in Cellular metabolism the last month. Researchers had 30 overweight subjects follow two four-week diets: one with 45% of daily calories in the morning, the other with 45% of daily calories at dinner.

Researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and the University of Surrey in England expected that those who ate a large breakfast and a small dinner would burn more calories and lose more weight. Instead, they found no differences in the subjects after they followed the two diets.

But those who followed the morning filling diet reported feeling less hungry. “We know that appetite control is important for achieving weight loss, and our research shows that those who consume the most calories in the morning feel less hungry,” said one of the study’s authors, Alexandra Johnstone, professor of nutrition at the University of Aberdeen. Rowett. Institute, in a news release.

Two additional and “rigorous” studies of healthy, overweight and obese people “show how ‘preloading’ calories is a useful strategy for reducing overall hunger,” said Satchidananda Panda, a professor in the Laboratory of Regulatory Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Research. in La Jolla, Calif., told US TODAY.

He was not involved in the food-loading studies, but he co-authored a study on time-restricted eating published this week in Cellular metabolism.

10 hour window for eating?

The study shows that your overall eating schedule and how close your meals are to each other are also worth looking at.

That’s because researchers found that firefighters who ate all of their meals within a 10-hour window had significantly lower levels of bad cholesterol, improved mental health and reduced alcohol consumption by about three servings per week.

Subjects in the study who had elevated blood sugar and blood pressure levels also improved significantly, they said.

Researchers from the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego tracked 137 San Diego Fire Department firefighters who were recommended to follow a Mediterranean diet and used an app to track their diet for three months. Half ate during a 10-hour window, the other half during a 14-hour window.

“Our study showed that shift workers with high blood pressure, blood sugar or cholesterol may benefit from a simple lifestyle intervention called time-restricted eating,” Panda said in a statement. “It’s not a pill, it’s a healthy habit that can significantly reduce these three disease risks without any side effects.”

Participants chose any 10-hour window with breakfast within two or more hours of waking and dinner three or more hours before bedtime on weekends, Panda told US TODAY. Most chose for breakfast between 8 and 10 am; noon to 1 p.m. for lunch; and 6 to 8 p.m. for dinner, he said.

“Putting it all together, it’s safe to say that general public can try to pick a 10-hour window that will fit their lifestyle for at least 5-6 days a week,” Panda said.

He suggests eating a larger breakfast, preferably at home, because it’s usually healthier, followed by a small lunch — “to reduce the afternoon swim,” he said — and a healthy dinner. “If they choose a window that ends before 8:00 p.m., they are also more likely to reduce their alcohol and dessert consumption in the evening/night.”

There are some limitations. “Those with type 1 or 2 diabetes, expectant mothers, and people taking prescription medications should check with their doctors before starting any dietary changes, including time restrictions,” Panda said.

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