New Research Suggests Timing of Meals Affects Weight Loss

While many of us still search for the magic bullet that will take and keep away extra pounds, medical science is doing what it can to improve health by unlocking the mysteries of weight control one piece at a time. People counting calories for weight loss may also want to re-think when they eat as a new study finds that eating at certain times of the day produced more weight loss in some study participants who ate the same amount of calories as other participants who ate at different times.

Timing of Food Intake Predicts Weight Loss Effectiveness

Researchers in Spain, encouraged by animal studies that revealed a relationship between time of feeding and weight control, wanted to determine whether the same would hold true in humans. The results of their research, published Tuesday in the International Journal of Obesity demonstrated that among the 420 study participants who ate equal calories in a 20-week weight-loss program, those that ate lunch before or at noon lost an additional five pounds more than participants who ate lunch later in the day.

The research was conducted in nutrition clinics located in the southeastern portion of Spain. Study participants were nearly evenly divided between male and female and also between those who ate lunch before and after noon. All of the participants ate a Mediterranean-style diet, one that includes lots of fruits and vegetables, fish, low dairy and even less red meat.

Study Results Suggest Time of Eating Important, but not Proof

NHS.UK.com explains that at first glance the research results show that the time a person eats their largest meal of the day has a direct effect on boosting weight loss, the results are instead a suggestion of the correlation between the time you eat and the amount of weight loss you can expect.

This study may be a beginning point for further study on the subject, but any future research would need to control variables not monitored in this study, such as randomly assigning study participants to eating their main meal at different times of day. Allowing the participants to maintain their normal eating schedules does not take into account biological or behavioral differences that may have impacted both the weight loss and the participants' normal eating pattern.

Despite headlines to the contrary, such as "Eat Earlier, Lose Weight, " the true value of the study has more to do with learning what factors and variables must be monitored in future studies in any attempt to correlate time of meals with weight loss.

Bottom Line

Frank Scheer, Ph.D. , study co-author, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, explained to Reuters Health that one of the reasons that eating your main meal earlier in the day rather than in the evening as do most Americans may contribute to better weight loss saying, "One of the other aspects to this is, what we know is glucose tolerance for example -- how well you can deal with sugar in your food -- your body is better able to cope with that in the morning than in the evening."

Yunsheng Ma, MD, Ph.D., MPH , a nutrition researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass. and not affiliated with the recent study, advises that people are best served by having a good breakfast and lunch, then eating lightly at dinner.

Weight loss still comes down to burning more calories than you eat.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/research-suggests-timing-meals-affects-weight-loss-203900612.html

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