By: Shirley Deng
When people try to lose weight, they start to watch their calorie intake. If you’re not into recording what you eat, try eating all your meals in a small time window.
Researchers found in a study of both methods of weightloss. The group of people who did not change their eating habits but ate all their food between noon and 8 pm had similar results to those who cut their calorie intake by 25%.
According to Krista Varady, a nutrition researcher at the University of Illinois Chicago, “the one that emphasized time instead of calories ‘is an easier diet to adhere to’”, meaning not changing what you eat but eating it a certain window is going to be much easier for people to stay on track.
The old-fashioned way of burning more calories than you eat is hard. It can be more expensive and time consuming. The strict way makes it hard to go out and enjoy a meal with friends or celebrate birthdays.
TRE or time-restricted eating is becoming more popular. The main point of TRE is to reduce the amount of insulin made by your body because it wants the body to store fat. Although TRE is easy to keep up with, does it deliver the same results as counting calories?
Varaday conducted an experiment with 90 obese people. She placed them in 3 groups: the control, reducing calories, and intermittent fasting. After six months, they found that people who reduced their calories lost about 11.2 pounds, and people who did TRE lost 8.8 pounds. The difference between each method is not statistically large.
They then focused on maintaining the lost weight. For the next six months, the calorie counting group increased their calories, and the TRE group made their time window bigger. After a year, the group tracking their calories was 9.5 pounds lighter, and the TRE group was 7.7 pounds lighter. Again, the difference wasn’t large. Meanwhile, the control group gained 2.4 pounds.
Either method will work for a motivated person, but intermittent fasting is better for accessibility and time commitment. All you need to do is stick to a time frame. No need to buy certain foods or throw away food. The results for calorie counting and TRE will be very similar.