By This simple way could be the key to lasting weight loss
Dieting is a drag — all that effort for little results and frustration doesn’t add up.
I believe I’ve tried almost every diet — the supposedly healthy ones.
Most worked well for the first three months, and the same happened. After that, the results stopped, and the weight started to crawl back up.
I often wondered if it was me, my metabolism or that I was perhaps destined never to regain my body-building leanness again.
I’m sure we’ve all contemplated similar thoughts at one time or another.
My one final attempt to lose weight and maintain it was a success (Thank goodness!).
Why were previous attempts failures?
How was it that all this time, I had failed miserably?
The problem may have stemmed from taking food groups away and restricting them for a long time.
Perhaps that was the start of many occurrences where I left my body with no choice but to experience duress.
Realising that I was at fault for making poor choices and tormenting my body, I decided to back to the basics of time-restricted eating.
And it worked! It’s still working now, four years later.
Perhaps you can think of this as Intermittent fasting, which I referred to then and still do now.
These days, new forms of fasting seem to be popping up everywhere.
The most successful weight loss timeframe – according to research
One most successful happens to be published in JAMA internal medicine, which specifies the hours between 7 am and 3 pm for your mealtimes.
That leaves 8 hours for you to eat breakfast, lunch, and a light snack or dinner.
Eating within an eight-hour window has proven very effective for weight loss, blood pressure control and improving mood in adults with obesity.
Researchers compared this to a group that ate in an eating window for over 12 hours.
Does it seem simple and effective enough to eat for only 8 hours a day instead of the usual 24 hours people regularly do?
Time-restricted eating has shown to be a lot more effective for losing weight and lowering blood pressure than eating over 12 or more hours at 14 weeks.
You won’t only get the benefits of weight loss and lowering of blood pressure.
There is also the added benefit of improving your mood and decreasing fatigue and feelings of depression.
More upper body fat is also lost due to time-restricted eating (which is usually the dangerous fat that’s quite stubborn to lose).
Time-restricted eating is similar to decreasing caloric intake by 214 calories per day.
Over the long term, that’s a pretty good number with minimal effort. But imagine how much caloric decrease will result from exercising too?
Why the specific times?
Finding out why these specific times between 7 am and 3 pm worked resulted in testing an afternoon eating window.
The consensus was that these restrictions seemed to have a greater benefit. It makes perfect sense from a fat-burning potential when you think about it carefully.
Insulin levels can remain lower for longer, thereby increasing caloric burning.
Therefore, we don’t need to eat food before going to sleep as it doesn’t benefit us as much from an insulin perspective. At that time, we were all sleeping, so food wasn’t necessary.
Although this research is a good starting point for anyone who wants to try Intermittent fasting, I recommend you adhere to a schedule that suits your lifestyle.
In that sense, you will have less trouble sticking to it over the long term.
For example, perhaps some people aren’t hungry in the mornings — and it makes more sense these individuals delay breakfast until lunchtime.
Observe your hunger signals to understand what timeframe would work best for you.
It will succeed if it works with your work, family and lifestyle!
Who has tried time-restricted eating, and how did it benefit you?
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