A new study suggests quitting midnight snacking and eating every 12 hours instead to lose weight.
Researchers from the Salk Institute in California experimented on 400 mice with normal to obese weight and placed them on meal schedules. The subjects were then divided into different diet groups: high in fat, fat and sugar and sugar only. They were also fed in different time periods: 9 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours and 15 hours. There were cheat days when the mice could eat all the fat that they wanted during the weekend. The subjects were observed for 38 weeks.
"These days, most of the advice is, 'You have to change nutrition, you have to eat a healthy diet,'" associate professor Satchidananda Panda said to The Telegraph.
"But many people don't have access to healthy diets. So the question is, without access to a healthy diet, can they still practice time-restricted feeding and reap some benefit?"
The experiment showed that mice which were fed a high-fat diet, but allowed access to food for only 12 hours per day, were healthier and slimmer than mice given access to the same food for the whole day, according to the Telegraph.
Researchers also saw that skipping midnight snacks improved blood sugar and cholesterol levels in the mice, as well as reversed the effects of diabetes. Researchers plan to conduct the same experiment with humans, BBC News reported.
The results remained consistent even after considering weight, diet and cheat days, indicating that this technique can withstand interruptions.
"The fact that it worked no matter what the diet, and the fact that it worked over the weekend and weekdays, was a very nice surprise," study co-author Amandine Chaix, a postdoctoral researcher in Panda's lab, said in a press release.
Obese mice, on the other hand, were able to shed off five percent of their weight in just five days after staying at the 9-hour window with no cheat days. Those that continued with their cheat days gained an additional 25 percent in their weight compared to those who stopped.
This study was published in the Dec 2. issue of Cell Metabolism.
