Eating routinely may help shed fat

A recent study was conducted at the University of Alabama to determine whether changing a person’s eating schedule could help them lose weight. This is one of the first human tests of early time-restricted feeding (eTRF) and it found that this type of meal timing can reduce swings in hunger and alter fat burning patterns. With eTRF people eat their last meal of the day by mid-afternoon and do not eat again until breakfast the next morning; essentially, the study suggests that eating during a much smaller window of time than one usually does can lead to weight loss. eTRF is associated with an 18-hour fasting period, the researchers claim that this keeps appetite levels more even throughout the day.
It is known that many aspects of the metabolism function to their optimum level at the beginning of the day; this diet seeks to exploit that and align with the circadian clock of the body. This study was conducted in 11 men and women with excess weight over four days, food intake was monitored as was calorie burning. Although eTRF did not alter the number of calories burned, it did reduce daily hunger swings and increased fat burning levels during night. This study was performed in a small sample size, therefore more research must be undertaken in this area in order to better understand its mechanisms and reliability.