While the diet wars may rage on, it’s pretty universally accepted that what you eat matters when it comes to weight management. In other words, out-eating our body’s energy needs leads to weight gain, and eating less than our body needs to go about its business leads to weight loss. Diets high in sugary drinks, fast food and empty-calorie snacks typically promote weight gain, while those higher in fiber-containing fruits, veggies and other plant based foods typically support a more healthy body weight.
Recently, however, evidence has emerged suggesting that when we eat may matter more than previously believed, and as such, that the timing of our eating patterns may indeed be a contributing factor to whether we gain – or lose – weight on any given type of diet.
Recently, the “timing matters” case gained further traction from a mouse study published in the journalCell Metabolism, in which researchers experimented with feeding lean and obese mice a variety of junky diets. The mice either had access to food around the clock, or had “time restricted feeding” to just nine, 12 or 15 hours per day. All groups of mice, however, still consumed the same total number of calories. The researchers found that even when lean mice were fed high-fat or high-fat and high-sugar diets with access limited to nine or 12 hours daily, they gained only about half the amount of weight their peers who were fed around the clock did – and did not become obese.
Read full, original story: What You Eat Matters. Does When You Eat Matter, Too?