Could the Timing of When You Eat, Be Just as Important as What You Eat?

[Northerner]

Most weight-loss plans center around a balance between caloric intake and energy expenditure. However, new research has shed light on a new factor that is necessary to shed pounds: timing. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), in collaboration with the University of Murcia and Tufts University, have found that it's not simply what you eat, but also when you eat, that may help with weight-loss regulation.

The study will be published on January 29, 2013 in the International Journal of Obesity.

"This is the first large-scale prospective study to demonstrate that the timing of meals predicts weight-loss effectiveness," said Frank Scheer, PhD, MSc, director of the Medical Chronobiology Program and associate neuroscientist at BWH, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and senior author on this study. "Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slower weight-loss rate and lost significantly less weight than early eaters, suggesting that the timing of large meals could be an important factor in a weight loss program."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130129080620.htm

 

[Northerner]

Early lunchers lose more weight, study finds

?It's not what you eat, it's when you eat", claimed a headline in The Independent today. It added that "people who dine later struggle to lose weight?? a claim we also looked at back in September 2012 (though that was a study in mice).
This Spanish study enrolled overweight and obese adults on a 20-week weight-loss programme and found that those who ate their lunch before 3pm lost an average of 2.2kg more weight than those eating lunch after 3pm. In Spain lunch is the main meal of the day, often eaten in mid to late afternoon. The researchers did not find a link between the timing of breakfast or dinner and weight loss.
As energy intake and expenditure were similar between early and late lunchers, these two factors could not explain the differences in weight loss. But both groups were on a weight-loss programme, so claims that ?it's not what you eat? are simply untrue.
Neither does this study does prove that eating an early lunch makes you slimmer, or that eating a late lunch makes you fat; it shows only that the timing of lunch may be related to weight loss in some way. What this link may be is not entirely clear, but it will no doubt be the subject of further research.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/01January/Pages/Its-not-what-you-eat-its-when-you-eat-part-2.aspx