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Eating late could hinder weight loss
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The timing of food intake is related to weight-loss effectiveness, according to data from a prospective longitudinal study published in the International Journal of Obesity.
The study included 420 overweight and obese participants (49.5% female) who were monitored during a 20-week treatment period in southeast Spain. Researchers followed the timing of the main meal (lunch) to determine weight-loss success. Participants were classified as early eaters if they ate lunch before 3 p.m. (51%) and late eaters if they ate lunch after 3 p.m.
Researchers wrote that during the main meal, 40% of the total daily calories were consumed, and the timing of the other (smaller) meals did not play a role in the success of weight loss.
Participants eating a later lunch also consumed fewer calories during breakfast and were more likely to skip breakfast altogether.
A late lunch may prolong a “semi-fasting” state and induce glucose metabolism impairments, according to researchers. However, the energy intake from lunch was almost three times larger than that from breakfast, which could be sufficient to maintain adequate glucose metabolism, even if dinner was late.
“This is the first large-scale prospective study to demonstrate that the timing of meals predicts weight-loss effectiveness,” Frank Scheer, PhD, MSc, director of the medical chronobiology program and associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a press release. “Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slow 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.”
Researchers found that the weight-loss pattern during the 20 weeks of treatment also differed between late and early eaters in a way that late eaters displayed a slower rate of weight loss starting after the fifth week of treatment.
No significant differences were found in age, gender, distribution, obesity-related variables and metabolic syndrome characteristics between the early and late eaters except for homeostasis model assessment, which was significantly higher in the late eaters, according to researchers.
Late eaters also had a lower estimated insulin sensitivity.
Other traditional factors that play a role in weight loss such as total calorie intake and expenditure, appetite hormones leptin and ghrelin, and sleep duration were examined. However, the researchers did not find any differences between both groups, suggesting the timing of the meal was an important and independent factor in weight-loss success.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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