Limit your eating to a period of six to eight hours each day, during which you can have whatever you want.
Time-restricted eating is a form of the popular intermittent fast diet. There are small studies that suggest it might help with weight loss.
A one-year study in which people followed a low-calorie diet between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. or consumed the same number of calories anytime during the day has failed to find an effect.
There is no benefit to eating in a narrow window, said Dr. Weiss, a diet researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
The study was led by researchers at the Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and included 139 obese people. Women ate 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day, and men ate 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day. Participants were required to keep food diaries and take pictures of their food.
The groups lost an average of 14 to 18 pounds, but there was no difference in the amount of weight lost with either diet strategy. There were no significant differences between the groups in waist circumference, body fat and lean body mass.
The scientists did not find any differences in risk factors such as blood pressure or blood sugar levels.
The results show that the beneficial effects of the time-restricted eating regimen were explained by the restriction of calories.
The new study is not the first to test time-restricted eating, previous studies were smaller and without control groups. The research concluded that people lost weight by only eating for a short time during the day.
For seven years, Dr. Weiss only ate between noon and 8 p.m., and he used to be a true believer in time-restricted eating.
He and his colleagues asked some of the 116 adult participants to eat three meals a day, with snacks if they got hungry, and others to eat whatever they wanted between noon and 8 p.m. The participants lost an average of two pounds in the time-restricted eating group and 1.5 pounds in the control group.
In an interview, Dr. Weiss said he couldn't believe the results. He asked the statisticians to analyze the data four times, until they told him they wouldn't change the results.
He said it was a hard thing to accept.
The experiment lasted just 12 weeks. It looks like a one-year study didn't find a benefit in time-restricted eating.
The director of nutrition studies at the Prevention Research Center said he wouldn't be surprised if time-restricted eating worked on occasion.
He said that almost every type of diet out there works for some people.
Weight-loss experts said that time-restricted diet is unlikely to go away.
She thinks the diet might benefit people by limiting calories they can consume.
Dr. Aronne said that some people who have trouble with diet plans do better if they are told to only eat for a short time each day.
It doesn't seem to be worse than calories counting, he said.
Dr. Apovian said that the hypothesis behind time-restricted eating was that genes that increase metabolism are turned on during daylight hours.
She said she would like to see a study that compared a group of people.
She said she would still recommend time-restricted eating to patients, even though they don't have proof.
The new data reinforced Dr. Weiss' conviction that time-restricted eating doesn't benefit.
He said that he started eating breakfast.
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