Facts on time-restricted eating

Q: I’ve been following your guidelines for restricted eating times and improved nutrition, and have lost 12 pounds in the past six months. Now I see that a new study declares that time-restricted eating doesn’t help with weight loss. So is it smart to restrict the time I eat or not?

David M., New York A: Where to start? Both groups in the Chinese study published in the New England Journal of Medicine ate the same significantly reduced amount of calories daily. That means the researchers eliminated the possibility of discovering if time-restricted eating may, in real-life situations, reduce the amount of food people eat — and therefore lead to increased weight loss.

The study only followed 139 obese people, and while everyone cut their calorie intake by 25%, the time-restricted group was allowed to eat only during an eight-hour window. There is some indication that folks who usually have breakfast at 7 a.m. and dinner at 8 p.m. (not uncommon in the U.S.) may get more benefit from time-restricted eating than the folks in the study did, who in their pre-study lives ate during a 10.3-hour window.

And then there’s the fact that, although the difference wasn’t huge, the calorie plus timerestricted folks did lose more weight than the calorie-restricted-only group. Plus, insulin resistance, triglyceride levels and high blood pressure were more improved in the doublerestricted group.

The real conclusion to be drawn from this study is that combining time and calorie restrictions is safe and effective and it’s a helpful way to achieve a healthy weight and a healthier metabolic profile that’s likely to let you live younger longer.

Regaining your health isn’t just about cutting calories and eating in a narrow timeframe. It’s also about improving the quality of your nutrition. That’s why my book is called “What to Eat When.” It offers a smart way to incorporate tasty nutrition into a weight-loss plan that has you eat fewer calories during fewer hours a day.