You Are When You Eat. Changing Meal Times Can Help You Stay Fit

Changing your breakfast time by 90 minutes can help you lose weight, says a new study.

So when is breakfast? 90 minutes late.

(Photo: iStockphoto)

You’ve gathered all possible information on ‘what’ you should eat, but perhaps you don’t know the ‘when’ of it. Now a new study claims changing eating patterns and time can impact how much body weight you’ll lose.

It doesn’t exactly tell you the ‘right’ time. It simply suggests changing the time that you regularly eat your meals. For example it suggests delaying your breakfast by 90 minutes and eating your dinner 90 minutes early.

The pilot study, published in the Journal of Nutritional Sciences, put half their participants on a 10-week ‘time-restricted feeding’. The participants had to have their breakfast 90 minutes after their regular time and dinner 90 minutes early. The other half continued to eat as they did. There were no restrictions placed on what the participants could eat, only when. And they had to maintain proper dairy.

The purpose of the study conducted in the University of Surrey was to investigate how changing meal times could impact body composition and blood risk markers for heart disease and diabetes.

Here’s What Happened

Those who changed their timings lost on average more than twice as much body fat as those in the control group. The reason? They ended up eating less amounts of food - either due to lack of appetite or simply by cutting out snacking.

So Should We All Just Change Our Meal Times?

Perhaps for short periods. The participants were asked if the activity was sustainable - could they continue to eat during the new slots. 57 per cent indicated that 10 weeks was enough. The reason they offered included finding time to eat, missing out of social gatherings etc.

This form of intermittent fasting is tough to maintain for long periods, but short bursts of it could prove beneficial.