Timing is everything. While you have likely heard this said on numerous occasions, rarely do people choose to expound on why it is imperative to take full advantage of good timing.
Good timing affects the course of our lives, including our health, it seems. Dr. Oz Mehmet recently presented a new health trend that is sweeping the nation which he says is the “best way to lose weight, prevent disease, and even live longer”.
Does this all sound too good to be true? Maybe not, when you delve a little bit deeper. This new approach is called “Time Restricted Eating”, and Mehmet is even on the diet himself.
Just what is Time Restricted eating? Well, it’s simple. Each day, you consume all your food and calories during the same eight-hour window. Try to get the bulk of your calories in before three in the afternoon. That’s basically it. Make your heaviest meal between the hours of 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM, and you’re golden.
Evidence suggests that this kind of schedule triggers biochemical changes inside our bodies to help us thrive. People who have gone on this diet have reported dropping up to twenty pounds in as quick as thirteen days, as their blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and other health conditions rapidly improved as well.
Mehmet swears up and down that the diet is easier than you think, and that it can totally transform your body. One reason that this style of eating helps shed excess pounds is that it prompts your body to burn a lot of extra fat. Limiting your meals and snacks to an eight-hour window means that you are fasting for sixteen hours a day. This is long enough that your body runs out of blood sugar and starts turning fat into ketones in order to produce energy.
This is what happens when people go on the keto diet. Instead of your body using carbohydrates as energy, it turns to ketosis and burns existing fat instead. This helps your waistline shrink, as well as provide an important source of fuel for your heart and brain.
Also, we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the bodies that we were born with. Modern humans still have the same genes that helped our ancestors survive periods of food scarcity and drought, which is why fasting actually helps to activate internal mechanisms that seem to make us feel stronger, more energized, and more alert. Time-restricted eating (TRE) has been shown to optimize levels of many hormones, including insulin, which is the enzyme that stores fat, and leptin, which is the hormone that suppresses appetite.
Furthermore, short fasts have been shown to spike the HGH hormone, which is responsible for aging. Research suggests that shifting all your meals into an eight-hour window is also good for your glands, like your thyroid. Studies from the National Institute of Health and Johns Hopkins University suggest that TRE can help us slim down and lead the longest and healthiest lives possible.
Mehmet noted that many people who try out TRE start out by skipping breakfast and moving their eight-hour eating window as late in the day as they possibly can, however if your reason for going on TRE is weight loss, you’d be better off with an earlier window. He suggests that our metabolism naturally slows down at night, so we burn off less of what we eat later on in the day. He recommends making breakfast and lunch your largest meals, and dinner your smallest, with eighty percent of your calories being consumed before 3:00 PM.
This isn’t just some arbitrary time either — Mehmet is citing research from Louisiana State University that found eating in an earlier window leads to more weight loss and greater improvements in insulin, blood pressure, and disease markers. Looks like our bodies really want us to become morning people!
Another study out of Tel Aviv University in Israel found that people who ate all their meals in an early window lost roughly ten times more weight compared to test subjects who consumed the same calories in a longer and later window.
So how do you get in on this great new diet? Dr. Oz Mehmet has recommended meal plans for those who are just getting started. To maximize results, he encourages you to choose mostly unprocessed foods. Water, coffee, tea, and broth are allowed outside of your eating window, but try to keep the milk and sugar in your tea and coffee to a minimum. Same goes for the sodium in your broth.
As always, remember to ask your doctor before you try any new diet.
TRE Meal Plan:
Big Breakfast:
- 1 serving of protein (like eggs or yogurt)
- 2 servings of fiber-rich starch (like whole-grain bread or cereal)
- A little good fat like almonds, peanut butter, or avocado,
- Unlimited fruit and veggies.
Hearty Lunch:
- 1 serving of protein
- 1–2 cups of whole grains or unprocessed starch (such as potatoes, pasta, brown rice)
- A little good fat like nut butters or dark chocolate
- Unlimited veggies.
Light Snack:
- A handful of nuts with fresh or dried fruit
- Or a hard-cooked egg with veggies
- Or hummus on flaxseed crackers
Light Dinner:
- Make this your lightest meal of the day.
- Satisfying options include a bowl of soup and/or a salad that go easy on carbs and fat
The TRE diet can help you on the way to losing weight and feeling great!
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