The results showed that just 12 weeks of time-restricted eating helped maintain long-term weight loss.
Research is ongoing on how what people eat and when they eat it affects weight loss and other aspects of health.
A recent study published in Clinical Nutrition examined the effects of certain intermittent fasting methods on weight loss 1 year later.
The authors of this study note that keeping weight off after losing it can be difficult, so it’s critical to discover methods that support sustained weight loss.
Finally, researchers found that most of the weight loss that occurred happened in the first 6 weeks of the intervention.
The results showed that just 12 weeks of time-restricted eating helped maintain long-term weight loss. However, some participants also lost non-fat mass, raising concerns about health risks.
This research explored eating within an 8-hour window, with that window starting at varying times.
Research is ongoing on how what people eat and when they eat it affects weight loss and other aspects of health. A recent study published in Clinical Nutrition examined the effects of certain intermittent fasting methods on weight loss 1 year later.
In addition, all participants received education about following a Mediterranean dietary pattern and engaging in physical activity. Participants reported when they first and last ate using a mobile app.
These participants were between the ages of 30 and 60 and either had overweight or obesity. For 12 weeks, participants engaged in 1 of 4 eating patterns:
The researchers wanted to see how time-restricted eating impacted weight loss in the long term. They did a secondary analysis of a randomized trial, focusing on a subsample of 99 participants.
The authors of this study note that keeping weight off after losing it can be difficult, so it’s critical to discover methods that support sustained weight loss. Time-restricted eating is a type of intermittent fasting in which people can eat what they want, but only within a specific time window of less than 10 hours.
After 12 weeks, the researchers didn’t tell participants to stop or continue the timing pattern they had to use during the study, and there was a follow-up 1 year later. At the 1-year mark, participants reported whether they had practiced time-restricted eating since the intervention ended. Researchers also assessed other components, such as body mass index and fat mass.
Among the 99 participants, only 65 completed the one-year follow-up assessment. Most participants in the time-restricted eating groups adhered to their eating schedule parameters throughout the intervention. At the one-year mark, 26% of participants reported using time-restricted eating on their own after the end of the intervention.
The results at the one-year mark showed a benefit to time-restricted eating. For the early and late time-restricted eating groups, there was a greater maintained loss of body weight compared to the control group that didn’t do time-restricted eating.
All three time-restricted groups also maintained a lower neck circumference. The late time-restricted eating group maintained larger decreases in waist and hip circumference, but also saw a decrease in fat-free mass.
Researchers also found that fat mass stayed lower in the early time-restricted eating group and that the group maintained “a tendency toward fat-free mass reduction.”
Pooling all 3 time-restricted eating groups showed better results as well. This group showed larger decreases in body weight, fat mass, and neck and waist circumference, and also larger decreases in fat-free mass than the usual care group.
Participants who said they did time-restricted eating after the intervention also sustained lower fat-free mass than participants who didn’t do time-restricted eating during this follow-up. Finally, researchers found that most of the weight loss that occurred happened in the first 6 weeks of the intervention.
Study authors Dr. Alba Camacho-Cardenosa, researcher at the Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria de Granada (ibs.GRANADA) and the Instituto Mixto Universitario Deporte y Salud (iMUDS), University of Granada, and Professor Jonatan R. Ruiz, Professor in the Department of Physical and Sports Education at the University of Granada, Principal Investigator of the project, and Co-Director of the PROFITH CTS-977 Research Group, explained the following:
“One year after completing the 12-week intervention, participants who had followed a TRE [time-restricted eating] schedule maintained greater weight loss than those who had received standard nutritional advice alone.”
“Interestingly, the benefits were observed regardless of whether the eating window was early in the day, late in the day, or self-selected, suggesting that reducing the daily eating window itself may be more important than the specific timing,” they told Medical News Today.
