Mealtime has no effect on weight gain. What matters is the quantity and quality of the food.
- Limiting eating to specific times of the day has no bearing on weight loss.
- It has never been proven that eating more in the morning than in the evening has an effect on weight.
Does limiting your diet to specific times of the day prevent weight gain? A study, presented on November 9 and conducted for 12 weeks by the American Heart Association concludes no, at least for people who are obese, overweight or diabetic. An observation shared by Patrick Serog, nutritionist, joined by Pourquoi Docteur. “There is no absolute rulehe continues. What is needed is to organize the meals in such a way as to have enough intake and that the energy density is not too high..”
Eat more in the evening or in the morning, no difference
The US study showed that limiting eating to specific times of the day had no impact on weight loss in overweight adults with pre-diabetes or diabetes. “An observation that can be extended to the entire population and which is confirmed in recent literature”, adds Patrick Serog. American researchers followed 41 overweight adults for 12 weeks. Among them, 21 followed a time-restricted diet, eating only at specific times of the day and consuming 80% of their calories by 1 p.m. The remaining 20 participants ate at their usual times during a 12-hour window, consuming half their daily calories after 5 p.m. All participants ate the same healthy, pre-prepared meals. Weight and blood pressure were measured at the start of the study, at 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 12 weeks. Note that most of the participants (90%) were black women with pre-diabetes or diabetes, with an average age of 59 years.
The results showed that restricting meals at the start of the day did not affect participants’ weight. “We’ve long wondered if eating during the day affects how the body uses and stores energy.commented Nisa M. Maruthur, senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine, epidemiology and nursing at Johns Hopkins University. Most previous studies didn’t control for calorie counts, so it wasn’t clear if people who ate earlier just ate fewer calories. In this study, the only thing we changed was the time of day to eat..”
The 3 meals a day, a social and economic organization
Participants in both groups lost weight and saw their blood pressure decrease. “We thought the time-limited group would lose more weightadmitted the researcher. Yet, that did not happen. We didn’t see a difference in weight loss for those who ate most of their calories earlier than later in the day. We also did not see any effects on blood pressure.”
For Patrick Serog, these results are not a surprise. “It has never been proven that eating more in the morning than in the evening has an effect on weighthe develops. The story that eating more in the morning would make you lose more weight dates back to the Middle Ages when you had to eat well in the morning before starting a big day at work. It was vital in relation to the work to be done. It entered the collective memory.” The current organization of three meals a day is more a social and economic organization than health arguments. “To regulate life in society, it is necessary to create food time spacesadds the nutritionist. In China, they are used to eating small amounts throughout the day and it does not affect their health.”
