Eating fewer meals might seem like a trendy Hollywood diet, but new research from the University of Georgia says it might be good for your health.
The research suggests that a specific type of restricted eating could cut your risk of getting type 2 diabetes and make your overall health better.
This type of fasting is called time-restricted eating. It involves having regular meals, but fewer of them, not eating late-night snacks, and not eating for 12 to 14 hours at a time (often overnight).
Challenging Traditional Meal Patterns
“We’ve been taught for a long time that we should eat three meals a day and snacks in between,” says Krzysztof Czaja, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at UGA. “But this might actually be causing obesity.”
Having three meals and snacks keeps your insulin levels from going down during the day.
With the amount of calories and sugar that Americans eat on average, this can overload your body’s insulin receptors. This can cause insulin resistance and often leads to type 2 diabetes.
The Benefits of Time-Restricted Eating
Time-restricted eating lets your body take a break and lower its insulin and glucose levels.
This can help with insulin resistance, brain health, and control of blood sugar levels. It can also help you eat about 550 fewer calories per day without having to count calories.
Fasting might also change the bacteria and other tiny organisms in your gut in a good way. This might help fight off inflammation and other problems with metabolism.
Time-restricted eating might also help control the hormones that control your appetite and energy levels.
Eating fewer meals and snacks and having regular meal times can help protect against obesity and type 2 diabetes.
And not all breakfasts are the same. Try to eat healthy fats and protein, like eggs, and avoid breakfast foods that are full of sugar.
Not All Fasting is Equal
Although time-restricted eating seemed to help health, other types of restricted eating, like fasting for days at a time, didn’t seem to help much.
Obesity: An Avoidable Epidemic
Obesity is a big problem right now, especially in the United States. More than four in ten Americans are obese, which means they weigh more than is healthy for their height.
Almost one in ten Americans are severely obese. Obesity can lead to many health problems, like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even some kinds of cancer.
“Eating is not a one-size-fits-all thing,” say the researchers. Different people need different amounts of food.
But eating fewer, high-quality meals is a good guideline for people who might get type 2 diabetes or become obese. And definitely avoid eating late at night.
“Our midnight snacks spike insulin, so instead of us going into a resting state when we sleep, our GI is working on digestion.
That’s why we wake up in the morning tired—because we don’t get enough resting sleep,” says Czaja.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies that eating more eggs is linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and how to eat to reduce heart disease death risk if you have diabetes.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about a high-protein diet linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by one-third.
The study was published in Nutrients. Follow us on Twitter for more articles about this topic.
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