However, if you eat higher-calorie foods, you may not end up eating less with time-restricted eating. Summary: For some people, time-restricted eating will reduce the number of calories they eat in a day. Whether or not it actually decreases the amount of food eaten probably varies by individual. Unfortunately, diet records are not very accurate ( 6).īecause of this, researchers don’t know just how much time-restricted eating really changes calorie intake. Diet records rely on participants to write down what and how much they eat.

What’s more, most studies on time-restricted eating have used diet records to measure calorie intake. If you choose high-calorie foods during your feeding period, you may end up eating a normal day’s worth of food even though you are eating for a shorter period of time.

However, other studies have shown that some people do not actually eat fewer calories during time-restricted eating ( 2, 5). One study found that when healthy adult men limited their eating to about a 10-hour window, it reduced the number of calories they ate each day by about 20% ( 3).Īnother study reported that young men ate about 650 fewer calories per day when they limited their food intake to a 4-hour period ( 4). In fact, some research has shown that time-restricted eating can reduce the number of calories you eat in a day ( 2). Switching from this style of eating to time-restricted eating may cause you to naturally eat less. Many people eat from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed.

Eat & run scott jurek