How To
Drop Pounds By Resetting Your Eating Clock
Could losing weight really be as simple
as shifting the hours we eat? While it’s too early to say if it’s true for
humans, new research from the Salk Institute is impressive, demonstrating that
when mice are kept from eating for stretches of between 9 and 15 hours, they
lose weight, even when consuming the same number of calories as mice that eat
whenever they feel like it. Even better? Within two weeks of the 38-week study,
the rodents significantly improved their cholesterol and blood glucose levels,
and overweight mice lost 5% of their body weight.
“It’s very difficult to make human
recommendations at this point,” Amir Zarrinpar, M.D., a post-doctoral fellow at
Salk, told Life Reimagined. “But the big take-away here, from a human
perspective, is that metabolism is complicated. It’s not simply a matter of
calories in and calories out. At certain times of day, the machinery that is in
place to process energy works differently.”
This study adds credence to the concept
that the body may need to fast for longer periods in order to maintain healthy
weights. While all the mice were fed the same number of calories, their diets
were different (high-fat, a mixture of fat and sucrose, or all sucrose). All
the time-restricted mice did better than mice who were allowed to eat whenever
they wanted, but the effects were strongest in mice with high-fat diets, and 9,
12 and 15-hour fasts.
Even better? Some of those mice were
given weekends off, to mimic the way people change their eating schedule when
not at work. At the end of eight weeks, even the weekends-off mice had more
lean muscle and lower cholesterol levels.
"We were really happy to see that
the timing restriction worked no matter what the diet was, in terms of fat
versus sugar, and with the fact that it worked over the weekend,” says the
Amandine Chaix, also a postdoctoral researcher, and the study’s lead author.
“It was very forgiving. Our studies suggest that fasting seems to have a
beneficial effect on metabolism.” While human trials are the next step, the
researchers say it can’t hurt to experiment now. If you normally eat breakfast
at 7 a.m., for example, why not finish dinner by 7 p.m., and banish night-time
snacking for two weeks?
You’ve got nothing to lose but some
weight.
AARP Life Reimagined | By Sarah Mahoney huffingtonpost.com
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