We are
going to take a quick break from our regularly scheduled programming because I
just stumbled upon this new study from FASEB. The study is titled "Timed
high-fat diet resets circadian metabolism and prevents obesity".
The wording "Timed high-fat diets" is kind of confusing,
but if you read the paper what they did was an intermittent fasting
protocol. Rats were separated into
one of 4 different groups: an ad libitum low-fat diet (AL-LF), an ad libitum
high-fat diet (AL-HF), a restricted feeding low-fat diet (RF-LF), or finally a
restricted feeding high-fat diet (RF-HF).
The restricted feeding group was only allowed to eat for 4 hours/day,
while the ad lib groups could eat whenever they want.
The results were pretty striking. The RF-HF mice consumed the same amount of calories as the
AL-LF mice, but had a 12% reduction in body weight compared to them. Also, the RF-HF mice also had lower
cholesterol levels, higher insulin sensitivity, and lower inflammatory markers
than all the other study groups.
The RF-HF mice also showed signs of improved lipid oxidation, showing
that the fat they consumed ended up being burned for energy, and not stored. Not to mention that the HF diet was
based on soybean oil and these are mice that are predisposed to become obese on
a high-fat diet. Finally you might
think that these researchers were starving these mice on the RF protocols, but
the RF-HF mice had lower ghrelin, indicating a higher degree of satiety.
A lot of people think that the benefits of intermittent
fasting come from reducing calorie intake due to the small eating window. However, this study shows that even if
you eat the same amount of food, and pretty crappy food at that, eating in an
IF way can help you improve your health.
I have found that I naturally tend to eat in a restricted feeding type
way, with most of my eating happening a 6 to 8 hour window just naturally. I just thought this was a pretty
interesting study and showed some of the very powerful benefits of IF protocols
for health.
When you say 4 hours per day, do you mean a set 4 hour window, i.e. 1pm-5pm. They could each as much as they wanted during that window, and nothing outside that window?
ReplyDeleteThis is really very interesting. One of the things I've tried to reconcile in my mind is why so many different populations can get similar results on dramatically different diets. Maybe the key is that if you are following any prescribed diet plan, you have an eating strategy, so you are apt to do less snacking and grazing outside that eating strategy. Personally, while I feel for the most part my food choices are sound, I do still feel I eat too often outside of major meal times, and do some grazing. I remember trying to explain why Dr. Oz's strategy of eating small meals many times per day was a bad strategy, I think I attributed it to constant elevated glucose and therefore the insulin "faucet" was always turned on. Could this actually be what is happening?
Yes it was in a 4 hour window. In the article it said that they had 12 hour light and dark periods and the mice in the RF groups were allowed to eat between hours 4 and 8 of the light phase. So once they turned the lights on, four hours later they let the mice start eating, four hours after that they stopped them eating.
DeleteI think this is a lot of what is happening. I think this is a real good topic and will write a bit more about it in future posts, but I do think how you eat is just as important as what you eat.