Time restricted eating & weight loss

Introduction

This week’s note is about a randomised controlled trial, which makes a welcome change from the epidemiology papers. The paper was written by Liu et al and it was called “Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss” (Ref 1).

The objective of the paper was to assess the relative efficacy of calorie restriction and time-restricted eating vs. calorie restriction alone.

The study

The study involved 139 patients with obesity (defined in this study as having a BMI between 28 and 45). Participants were aged 18 to 75. There were a number of exclusion criteria – people with diabetes, kidney disease, and/or cardiovascular disease were excluded. People on medications that affect weight were excluded and people who had been actively dieting in the previous 12 months were also excluded. The 139 people were randomly assigned to either time-restricted eating (eating only between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm) with calorie restriction or daily calorie restriction alone.