Meal planning strategies can help reduce appetite and burn more fat

Researchers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham have discovered that meal planning strategies, such as intermittent fasting or eating earlier in the day, seem to help people lose weight. weight. According to a report published online today in the journal, it has also been shown that this approach reduces appetite instead of burning more calories. Obesity, the flagship newspaper of the society of obesity.

This study is the first to show how mealtimes affect energy metabolism over 24 hours when food intake and meal frequency are matched.

We suspect that a majority of people find meal planning strategies helpful in losing weight or maintaining their weight because they naturally seem to limit appetite, which can help people eat less. "

Courtney M. Peterson, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study and Assistant Professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences, UAB

Peterson and his colleagues also reported that meal planning strategies can help people burn more fat on average over a 24-hour period. Early Time-Limiting Feed (eTRF) -; a form of daily intermittent fasting where dinner is taken in the afternoon -; helped improve people's ability to alternate between burning carbohydrates for energy and burning fat for energy, an aspect of metabolism called metabolic flexibility. The authors of the study, however, say that the results regarding fat burning are preliminary.

"The question of whether these strategies help people lose body fat needs to be tested and confirmed in a much longer study," Peterson said.

For the study, the researchers recruited 11 adult men and women who were overweight. Participants were recruited between November 2014 and August 2016. Healthy adults aged 20 to 45 were eligible to participate if they had a body mbad index between 25 and 35 kg / m2 ( included), a weight between 68 and 100 kg, a regular bedtime between 21:30 and 12 hours, and for women, a regular menstrual cycle.

Participants tried two different strategies of synchronizing meals in random order: a control program in which participants took three meals over a 12-hour period, with breakfast at 8 o'clock and dinner at 20 hours. and an eTRF program where participants had three meals over a six-hour period, with breakfast at 8 o'clock and dinner at 14 o'clock. The same quantities and types of food were consumed in both schedules. The fasting periods of the control program included 12 hours a day, while the eTRF program consisted of 18 hours of fasting a day.

Participants in the study followed the different schedules for four consecutive days. On the fourth day, the researchers measured participants' metabolism by placing them in a respiratory chamber; a device similar to a room -; where researchers measured how many calories, carbohydrates, fats and proteins were burned. The researchers also measured participants' appetite every three hours when they were awake, as well as hunger hormones in the morning and evening.

Although ETF did not have a significant impact on the number of calories burned by the participants, the researchers found that it was possible to reduce the levels of ghrelin, a hunger, and improve some aspects of appetite. It also increased fat burning during the 24-hour day.

"By testing eTRF, we were able to kill two birds with one stone," said Peterson, adding that the researchers had a better understanding of daily intermittent fasting (restricted feeding over time), as well as synchronization strategies. meals earlier in the day to be in tune with circadian rhythms.

Researchers believe that these two broad categories of meal planning strategies may have similar benefits to eTRF. Peterson, a scientist at the UAB's Center for Research on Nutrition Obesity, explained that previous research had been contradictory about whether meal synchronization strategies allowed weight loss by helping people burn more calories or reduce appetite. Studies in rodents suggest that such strategies burn more calories; but the data from human studies were contradictory -; Some studies have suggested that meal synchronization strategies increase the number of calories burned, but other reports showed no difference. The authors of the study say, however, that previous studies did not directly measure the number of calories burned or imperfect in any other way.