A new study suggests that eating on schedule will help you prevent weight gain and avoid calories.
The findings suggest that restricting meal times might be an underappreciated way to help people keep off the pounds.
Every organ has a clock. Liver, intestines, muscles and other organs work at peak efficiency, and there are times they need to rest.
These metabolic cycles are critical for processes such as cholesterol breakdown, and they should be turned on when we eat and turned off when we don’t.
The researchers in the Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California studied mice fed with high-fat food and allowed to eat whenever they wanted to. Another group of mice that had their feeding restricted to eight hours a day were found protected against obesity, despite the fact that they consumed just as many calories as the unrestricted mice.
Over the 18-week study, the time-restricted mice were protected from the adverse effects of their high-fat diet, and showed improvements in their metabolism compared with the unrestricted mice. They gained 28 percent less weight than unrestricted mice and suffered less liver damage.
The researchers said further work is needed to show the same thing happens in people. Morestudies should collect information on when people eat, and not just what they eat.
The researchers believe the eating patterns of people have changed in recent years with the development of social networking sites, fastfood chains and convenient stores open 24/7. Many people have greater access to food and they stay up late into the night, sitting in front of TV or on computer.
Source: Journal News
