The secret of good health has long been said to be breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a poor man.
Now, scientists have gone further, concluding that the best way to get in shape is to avoid all meals after 3 p.m.
Intermittent fasting has grown in popularity in recent years. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
Now, researchers who reviewed 250 studies on diets and lifestyles have concluded that fasting for about 15 hours a day is optimal for health and weight loss.
Eat early to lose weight
Research found that dieters who ate early were more likely to achieve significant weight loss.
A study of women on a 12-week calorie-controlled diet found that those who ate most meals in the early hours of the day lost 11 pounds more than those who ate the same calories throughout the day.
In the latest review of the evidence, scientists found that early banquet was associated with a number of other health benefits: lowering blood pressure, inflammation, and risk factors for diabetes.
When people on the diet were assigned the same calories, eating more daily was associated with increased weight loss. And in other studies, where the thinner ones had more free rein on their diet, it seemed that eating before the day regulated appetite, reducing total calorie intake.
The findings, presented at the European Obesity Congress in the Netherlands, suggested that the best results came from eating all meals before 2pm or 3pm.
Scientists said that following this pattern worked best with the body’s circadian rhythms, taking advantage of its natural body clock, improving blood sugar processing and increasing healthy intestinal bacteria.
“Time-restricted food” is becoming popular
Dr. Courtney Peterson, an associate professor and co-director of Sleep and Circadian Research Core at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA, said: “Time-restricted food is becoming very popular. People usually eat inside. from a window of eight to ten hours and therefore fasting from 14 to 16 hours a day. “
The researcher said that consistent meal schedules helped improve health, avoiding a kind of “metabolic jetlag” that could be fueled by changing habits.
“We believe the benefits come when there is the same time window to eat every day,” Dr. Peterson said. “The reason for this is that you have an internal biological clock, called the circadian system.
“Your highest alert level, testosterone production and, in most people, the best control of your blood sugar is in the morning. So your metabolism is a bit optimized.
“One of the things that is really important to have these optimal circadian rhythms is to do the same at a constant time of day.”
A study by Dr. Peterson’s team in the United States found that people were less hungry when they ate at 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. than if the six-hour meal window occurred later in the day. They concluded that eating early regulated appetite.
A second study by the same team found that these times increased gene expression and hormone levels, which could explain its anti-aging effects seen in animal studies.
A separate study of prediabetic men who ate all their meals in a six-hour window, which ended at 3 p.m., found significant benefits in insulin sensitivity in just five weeks, reducing the risk of diabetes. .
According to the researchers, a number of other improvements in health were observed, including a 10-point drop in blood pressure and an improvement in a kind of molecular damage to the body called oxidative stress.
The set of researches suggested that advancing dinner a couple of hours was not enough to make a difference.
“Some of the recent studies that have shown that people eat in a 12-hour window and fast for 12 hours a day have found no additional benefit,” Dr. Peterson said.
“Painless” way to lose weight
Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said: “The mantra” breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a poor man “couldn’t be better to describe this research.” He said these changes offered a “painless” way to lose weight.
He added: “A good royal breakfast is very important to start the day well and lunch should still be a substantial thing. And that’s more or less. Any other meal should be minimal and eaten early in the evening. “.
Chinese research, which tracked 90 volunteers, found that restricting food to the first part of the day, rather than the afternoon, was more effective.
The paper, published in Nature Communications, found: “Western-style diets, which include high-fat foods and snacks that are consumed throughout the day, play a leading role in the development of some chronic diseases. , our human ancestors did not have continuous access to a food supply. “