Does an 8-hour “eat day” work?

Does shrinking your eating hours lead to more weight loss than cutting calories?

Researchers randomly assigned 75 adults with obesity and type 2 diabetes to:

• eat only from noon to 8 p.m.,
• cut calories by 25 percent, or
• eat as usual. 

After 6 months, weight fell by 3.6 percent more in the noon-to-8-p.m. group than it did in the eat-as-usual group. The drop in the calorie-cutting group (1.8 percent) was not statistically significant.

And the noon-to-8-p.m. group ate 300 fewer calories per day, while the calorie cutters ate 200 fewer calories per day.

What to do

Want to eat less? Try limiting your eating hours. But in two other studies, that led to no more weight loss than cutting calories.