Time-restricted eating, reducing the number of meals eaten in a day, and getting more calories earlier in the day all seem to be effective weight-loss strategies, according to a new systematic review published today.
Scientists at the University of Bond, Australia, brought together and reanalyzed data from 29 previous clinical trials of those three dietary interventions, all of which compared them with control groups who were given standard care or nutritional advice.
Scientists found that all three interventions helped participants lose a significant amount of weight, just by changing the timings of when they ate, rather than the contents of their diets.
The scientists wrote that recently there had been increased interest in “meal-timing strategies”—more commonly known as intermittent fasting—where people change the “when” rather than the “what” of their diets to lose weight.
Time-restricted eating involves shortening the window of time in which eating occurs throughout the day; for example, to eight …