Weight loss is facilitated by eating dinner early or skipping it altogether, as it helps combat cravings and alters fat and carbohydrate metabolism, leading to a decrease in body fat percentage. Additionally, adhering to a specific eating window, where meals are discontinued in the afternoon, reduces the risk of chronic diseases.
Without dinner, losing weight is easier
Many people know from their own experience that diets are better and easier to lose weight if you go to bed without dinner. However, this factor has not yet been scientifically proven. Also, you don’t know what exactly changes in the body when you stop eating in the early afternoon.
In English, this is referred to as early time-restricted feeding (eTRF) and means that you eat your last meal in the early afternoon at the latest and then stop eating until breakfast the next morning.
Even with intermittent fasting, dinner is skipped
The procedure for eTRF is similar to intermittent fasting, a diet in which you eat only twice a day and keep long intervals between meals. For example, you eat your first meal here in the late morning around 11 a.m., and then eat again around 4 p.m. Then nothing is eaten until the next day.
The term “fasting” now refers to the long period between the last meal, which ends around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m., until the first meal the next day. This fasting period is therefore about 18 hours. The time window in which food is ingested, on the other hand, is only 6 to 7 hours.
Intermittent fasting is associated with many health benefits. Not only does it lose weight, but it can also have a positive effect on high blood pressure, diabetes, and high blood lipid levels, yes, basically all chronic diseases, as intermittent fasting also reduces chronic inflammatory processes, which are considered to be the trigger of most lifestyle diseases.
It is best to eat only between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m
With the eTRF, the food intake window is a little earlier in the day. You can have your meals between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. The benefits of eTRF or dinner skip have now been tested in the first human study and presented at the Obesity Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans in November 2016.
“If you only eat your meals within a small window of time, this measure alone will help you lose weight.”
explains Dr. Courtney Peterson, who led the study at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
“If you eat between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the afternoon and then don’t eat anything for 18 hours, then – we found out – you can control your appetite very well, which is hardly possible compared to the usual time window of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. in the evening. Unfortunately, however, most people eat in exactly this huge window of time.”
In the morning, the body burns best
The researchers from Louisiana showed that the eTRF is very well suited for losing weight. The body has an internal clock. If you eat in harmony with this internal clock, this has a very positive effect on your health and also on your weight.
This is because most metabolic processes work best in the morning so meals can also be processed and burned best of all. From the early evening, however, these metabolic processes only run on the back burner, so that the food can no longer be metabolized well and is much more easily stored in the form of fat.
In previous studies on rodents, it had already been shown that the described type of food intake can be used very well to reduce excess weight (whereby body fat and not predominantly muscle mass is lost) and also helps to minimize the risk of chronic diseases.
The clinical trial conducted by Dr. Peterson’s team involved eleven men and women who were overweight. They initially ate only between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. (eTRF) for four days. Then, for four days, they ate between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., the way most people do.
The researchers now examined the influence of the eTRF method on the number of calories burned, the amount of fat burned, and on appetite.
Fat burning increases when you go to bed without dinner
It turned out that the eTRF did not affect the number of calories burned. However, daily cravings decreased and fat burning increased – for several hours at night.
The eTRF also improved the flexibility of the metabolism. This is the ability of the metabolism to switch back and forth between fat-burning and carbohydrate-burning as needed.
These changes in the metabolism of the participants and in their eating behavior (less appetite) are so beneficial that not only can the body fat percentage be reduced, but also many chronic diseases can be positively influenced or do not occur at all if the eTRF is practiced regularly and permanently.
Going to bed without dinner – and losing weight is easy
Whether you eat two or three main meals a day, whether you integrate snacks, or whether you eat a few large or several small meals, is up to you and your preferences. In any case, however, it is important not to eat anything from the late afternoon (4 p.m. at the latest, better earlier), i.e. to go to bed without dinner. You will see that you will lose weight much more easily.
Drinks – such as water or herbal teas – can of course be consumed. But smoothies or shakes not, as these are liquid meals.