Intermittent fasting may not help you lose weight as once thought, study finds

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Is snacking before bed your bad habit? Or do you wait a few hours after waking up before eating?

Meal timing may not have as much of an impact on weight as once thought, according to new research.

In addition to health and weight data, the study tracked portion size and meal frequency of 547 people over a six-year period. The data showed no relationship between the number of days people ate and body weight. According to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Restricting meal times has become a popular weight loss method in recent years, as evidenced by diet trends such as intermittent fasting.

But the researchers found no link between restricting meal times and weight loss, said the study’s lead investigator and associate professor of general medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Wendy Bennett, Ph.D. This included meal times after waking, meal times during the day, and meal times just before bedtime, she noted.

Instead, eating less is associated with weight loss, she said.

“Based on other published studies, including ours, I’m starting to think that timing your meals throughout the day doesn’t mean you’ll lose weight right away.” may be a useful tool for

Experts cautioned that the results of this study should be taken with a grain of salt.

Racial and ethnic minorities were few among the participants, noted Dr. Fatima Cody, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Cody added that there are also many social determinants of health that can be added to the data, such as stress and people’s environment.

These factors may be important to better understand the effects of meal timing, added Alice Lichtenstein, professor of nutritional science and policy at Tufts University.

“If they look more closely at the data, I suspect there may be subgroups where[meal timing]may have had a significant impact,” Lichtenstein said.

Bennett noted that the study was observational, meaning it looked at existing patterns in the study rather than making changes to the randomized groups. Further work on this topic is underway, she added.

The bottom line, according to Lichtenstein, is that no strategy works for everyone when it comes to nutrition, and food quality matters.

“If you eat healthily and try to be physically active, you are less likely to develop diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obstructive pulmonary disease, and high blood pressure,” says Lichtenstein.

It’s a boring story that no one wants to hear, but when it comes to weight management, eating fruits and vegetables and doing physical activity are inevitable.

For some people, trying intermittent fasting or limiting the intervals between meals can help them spot individual trends, but for many people, it’s a good idea to see long-term changes. can’t keep it up long enough. Or you can’t maintain weight loss.

Cody, an obesity physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center in Boston, doesn’t want to focus too much on calorie restriction or intermittent fasting. I want you to

For the body, 100 calories in gummy bears is not the same as 100 calories in oatmeal with fruits and nuts, she added.

But different approaches work better with different lifestyles, Cody said, and everyone should work with their doctor and their body without stress or embarrassment.

If a nutritional strategy works for others, it simply means that some people’s bodies responded and others didn’t. It’s just not what your body needed. ”