Forget the strict diet rules and banning all your lovely treats – a new study suggests losing weight is all down to some pretty specific timing. A new study from the Salk Institute in California suggests eating only within an eight-hour period each day can help you shed weight. The results also indicate that when food was restricted to the times of 9am-5pm, the body seemed to ‘undo’ the harm done by a fattier or unhealthier diets. According to researchers, sticking to the strict meals times allows the body to predict its eating patterns, and will help prepare to burn calories, regulating metabolism. The study, which was conducted on mice, also suggests to avoid snacking after 5pm, as this will increase spikes in sugar in the body. The mice were divided into two groups – the group which ate a high-fat diet within an eight hour time frame, and those who were given the same number of calories, but spread throughout the day. Scientists then reduced the mice eating over the period of the whole day to just nine hours, and found they were able to drop up to 5% of their body weight within a week while still consuming the same number of calories. Speaking about the findings, Professor Satchin Panda, who led the study, said: “Most of the advice is, “You have to change nutrition, you have to eat a healthy diet.” But many people don’t have access to healthy diets. So the question is, without access to a healthy diet, can they still practise time-restricted feeding and reap some benefit? “We found that animals fed within a window of eight to 12 hours had a number of protective and therapeutic health benefits compared with animals allowed to eat the same number of calories from the same food source at any time.” And for anyone who loves a cheat day on the weekend? The study suggests a weekend cheat day didn’t affect the mice weight loss efforts, with those on strict five hour diets retaining their weight loss when given increased calories on one day. So the answer seems to be everything in moderation. Within eight hours.