Timing Is Everything: Could When You Eat Be Slowing Down Your Weight Loss?

Are you currently trying to lose weight? If you’re doing everything right, yet failing to see any solid results on your scales it could be more to do with WHEN you’re eating, rather than WHAT you’re eating.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the University of Murcia have revealed that having your lunch later in the day actually makes it harder for you to shed those pesky pounds.

In a study, researchers found that people who at before 3pm tended to lose 30 per cent more weight than those who dined later in the day. In fact, the ‘early eaters’ tended to lose an average of 22lbs in weight – that’s a whopping 5lbs more than the other half of the group who ate later in the day.

The results of the study, which have been published in the noted International Journal of Obesity, also found that ‘late eaters’ tended to shed the pounds slower than their ‘early eating’ counterparts.

Like breakfast, lunch has become a super-important meal during the day...

“This is the first large-scale prospective study to demonstrate that the timing of meals predicts weight-loss effectiveness,” said Dr Frank Scheer, one of the senior authors of the study.

“Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slower weight-loss rate and lost significantly less weight than early eaters, suggesting that the timing of large meals could be an important factor in a weight loss programme,” he added.

However, the researchers found that the timing of other meals didn’t play any role in the success of weight loss. So basically it doesn’t matter what time we eat our breakfast or our dinner at, but we do need to keep an eye on what time it is when it comes to sitting down to lunch.

Are you an early eater or a late eater?