IF YOU thought that shedding weight is all about restriction, dieting and calorie counting, one doctor begs to differ.
The gut health specialist and nutritional expert has said that it’s possible to lose weight without changing the foods you eat or the amount at all.
Tim Spector said time-restricted eating could help you shed a few pounds
All you need to do is change the times in which you consume them.
Speaking on diet guru Michael Mosley’s BBC Sounds podcast, Just One Thing, Tim Spector delved into what and how we should be eating to maximise our health and well-being.
Aside from cutting down on ultra-processed foods and introducing fermented food like kefir and sauerkraut into your diet, the leading expert on nutrition and gut health – and co-founder of the ZOE app – floated the idea of ‘time-restricted eating’.
He said the practice “comes under the umbrella of intermittent fasting” and consists of eating within a specific window of time and abstaining from food for the remainder of the day.
“You don’t change the amount you eat or what you eat,” he told listeners of the podcast. “You just change the time window you are eating in.”
Tim’s ideal plan involves fasting for 14 hours and eating for 10 hours of the day.
That might not seem radical or hard, but it does differ from the way Brits usually consume their food throughout the day.
Tim pointed out: “In the UK, the average time window is probably around 15 or 16 hours, because we snack so much. So we’re eating from the time we get up in the morning to just before going to bed.
“There are lots of studies showing that is very bad for us. It not only gives us lots of sugar spikes and causes problems to our metabolism that way, it encourages overeating, it makes us sleep poorly, but it also has a bad effect on our gut microbes.
“Microbes – like us – need a good night’s sleep. If you give them that sleep then they have a cleaning team that comes out at night, they have a shift change, so scavengers come and tidy up your gut lining and make your gut this perfectly oiled machine that our ancestors had and we’ve lost.”
He suggest that a 10-hour time window is optimal, telling listeners they “could go harder but it’s not sustainable”.
He added: “You’ve got to find what works for you”.
Tim said he’d been involved in a study in which around 100,000 gave time restricted eating a go.
“Most people – about 80,000 – managed to do a ten-hour time window for several weeks and they felt better, their mood improved, their sleep improved, energy levels improved and other studies have proved their microbiome improves as well. It’s about finding a window that suits you and it can be early or late.”
Some people might have breakfast at 7am and finish eating at 5pm, while others might want to have their last meal by about 9pm, so choose not to eat until 11am the next day.
Whatever the time window you choose, Tim emphasised that “it’s got to be sustainable”.
“You don’t have to do it every single day, because we’ve all got social lives and we’re working and doing other things.
“It’s a very simple thing to do and I think we can all incorporate it into our lives,” the gut health specialist wen on.
Again referring to the studies that tested the method out, Tim said “almost everyone who did it did lose a small amount of weight without consciously changing in any way their calories or attempts to eat”.
But don’t force it if it doesn’t work for you and don’t lose sight of the fact that food is meant to be enjoyed.
Tim recalled that while he found implementing time-restricted eating “incredibly easy”, a couple of his colleagues who were “born snackers” found it “impossible”.
Tim says he fasts for 14 hours and eats within a 10 hour window “most days a week”, whereas Dr Mosley said he’s “probably more a 12:12 person”.