Adults with overweight or obesity who limited eating to an eight-hour daily window during a 12-week program maintained more weight loss one year later than participants assigned to eat over 12 hours or more, according to researchers in Spain.
A 12-week time-restricted eating program was associated with greater weight-loss maintenance at 12 months in a randomized trial of 99 adults with overweight or obesity, researchers at the University of Granada and partner institutions reported.
In the intervention, participants received Mediterranean-diet education and were assigned to one of four groups: a usual-care control group that kept an eating window of 12 hours or longer, and three groups that limited intake to an eight-hour window—an early schedule (starting before 10 a.m.), a late schedule (starting after 1 p.m.), or a self-selected schedule chosen by participants.
At the 12-month follow-up after the structured program ended, participants in the eight-hour time-restricted eating groups had maintained greater weight loss than the control group, the researchers reported. The team also reported that an early schedule was linked to a larger reduction in fat mass compared with the control condition.
Alba Camacho-Cardeñosa, the study’s first author and a researcher affiliated with the University of Granada and ibs.GRANADA, said the weight changes were still evident after the intervention ended. The findings were published in the journal Clinical Nutrition.
