Researchers found no association between weight change and the practice of restricting food intake at specific times of the day, often referred to as intermittent fasting, following a study at Johns Hopkins University.
During the study, 547 participants logged their food intake and meals on a mobile app every day for six months. Then, scientists used an electronic health record to look at their weight over about six years; more than five years before and about six months after
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"This study shows that changing your timing of eating is not going to prevent slow weight gain over many, many years – and that probably the most effective strategy is by really monitoring how much you eat, and by eating fewer large meals and more small meals," said Dr. Wendy Bennett, author of the study and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
However, "The effect is so small, I wouldn't tell anyone to change what they're doing," Courtney Peterson, an associate professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was not involved in the study, said.
Several results in previous studies indicated mixed outcomes. Some studies revealed that limiting calorie intake or fasting on a determined day helps lose weight. Nevertheless, other studies showed that regulating your diet for a specific period cause less weight loss than limiting your daily calorie intake.
"Some of the best data in humans suggest that diet quality is probably more important than meal timing," Peterson said.
