"Early Time Restricted Feeding" Sure Sounds Fancier Than "Skipping Dinner"
I mean who likes eating after 3pm anyhow?
Another day another short term (14 week) diet study published. This despite all long term studies basically demonstrating all diets are as good or as bad as one another, that adherence is both variable and king, and that consequently no one diet strategy is reproducibly and uniformly tremendous at helping sustain clinically meaningful losses, and of course that 14 week diet studies offer nothing useful to the discourse.
The study, Effectiveness of Early Time-Restricted Eating for Weight Loss, Fat Loss, and Cardiometabolic Health in Adults With Obesity: A Randomized Clinical Trial was designed to compare advice on caloric reduction with advice on caloric reduction coupled with the recommendation to skip dinner every night, I mean only eat between 7am and 3pm, I mean practice early time restricted feeding, I mean do eTRE.
As to the results? People skipping dinner for 14 weeks lost 5 additional pounds compared with those not skipping dinner.
Huzzah.
Honestly people can endure all sorts of dietary interventions over 14 weeks, the outcomes of which, considering we’re discussing a chronic condition and the decades and decades of research demonstrating no diet to be superior in the long run, should not interest or excite anyone. All the more so when the intervention required involves suffering of any sort (physical, emotional, or mental).
Stopping eating every day at 3pm and skipping dinner nightly? Putting aside any consequential nightly battles with cravings and hunger, for many of us, we’d also be putting aside the meal we’re most likely to spend enjoying time and conversation with friends and family.
But hey, 5 whole lbs.
Sigh.
Thank you, Dr Yoni, for your note on the ‘restrict feeding diet’..
Just one example…in my case, after a few “unsuccessful” tries of intermittent fasting, I was able to hang on to it since Nov2019..to this day.
Some info:
- prior to int.fasting, my weight would vary between 72 and 76 kg (at 5ft4, my BMI was ‘overweight’ - however worth BMI measure is..)
- for the first ~8 months I observed the 16h of fasting almost always, eating between 10am and 6pm daily.
- during that time, my weight dropped to ~62 kg - varying a few hundred grams above, some hundred grams below - and stayed there.
- after the first year and up to now(Jan2023) i fast for 15h weekdays and 16h on weekends - except on the occasional get-together, parties,..and still @ 62kg
- I am active physically, feel energized throughout the day - still playing soccer with friends : ) - and sleeping mostly well (except nights when my chronic back pain becomes sharp).
I agree with you, though…it’s not everyone who can adapt and feel well doing intermittent fasting, but I thought in sharing this account in case someone is considering trying: i finally was able to stick to it and feel really well nowadays.
Cheers!
What are the high return on investment long term strategies then? Lift couple times a week, go for walks, sleep, inject incretins?:-) Are any of the strategies dietary when that inevitably involves some kind of suffering?