The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yearlong study shows time-restricted diets are no magic bullet
Many of us have put on an extra pound or two the past couple of years and are looking for ways to get back to our 2019 fighting weight.
You can try one of U.S. News & World Report’s best diets of 2022, which were selected by a panel of diet, nutrition and health experts. But there’s one diet you might not want to waste your time on, according to a new study.
In a paper published last week, researchers from Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, in China, and the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the United States found that time restricted diets offer no benefits toward weight loss.
For their study, the scientists recruited 139 obese volunteers who agreed to reduce their caloric intake for a year. Participants were then randomly chosen to restrict their eating to 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“The idea was that eating only during such periods would coincide with important parts of the circadian rhythm resulting in higher metabolic activity burning more calories,” Bob Yirka wrote for Medical Xpress.
The participants were monitored throughout the year for not only weight loss, but also smaller waistlines.
At the end of the year, the researchers concluded that although the participants who restricted their meals to a timeframe lost more weight, it wasn’t enough to make a statistical difference. They also determined time-restricted dieting had no effect on the size of the volunteers’ waistlines.
According to the scientists, the participants would have lost the same amount of weight simply by cutting calories. The study was published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.