When You Eat May Trump What You Eat for Weight Loss

“Cut back on calories” seems to be the dietary mantra when it comes to reducing weight.

However, a study on mice published Thursday in the Journal of Cell Metabolism suggests that losing weight may have less to do with watching calories — and more to do with watching the clock. “For millions of years, we humans spent our lives as diurnal species — eating most of our calories only in the daytime and fasting overnight,” said Satchin Panda, associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and lead author on the study.

“In the last one hundred years or so, we have started to stay up at night and consume calories at night too. During this time, we have also observed an increase in the cases of diabetes and obesity.” This study found that mice that consumed as many calories as they wanted for eight hours and fasted for the remaining 16 hours were essentially the same as mice that ate a healthy diet when it came to gaining weight, diabetes risk and high cholesterol.

“The gist of this study is that the timing and the number of hours you fast impact your weight gain,” Panda said. “Watch the times of day you eat as opposed to what exactly you eat. You don’t have to be as strict in counting calories.”

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