Time Restricted Feeding refers to the method of eating during a 8 hour window and fasting for 16 hours. During your 16 hours you can only drink water.
Feeding is confined to a defined period, leaving short periods of fasting that coincide with sleep. Fasting enables organisms to enter alternative metabolic phases, which rely less on glucose and more on ketone body-like carbon sources. Both intermittent and periodic fasting result in benefits ranging from prevention to the enhanced treatment of diseases. Similarly, time-restricted feeding (TRF), in which feeding time is restricted to certain hours of the day, allows the daily fasting period to last >12 h, thus imparting pleiotropic benefits in multiple organisms.
According to researchers at the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, “when we eat may be as important – or even more important – than what we eat. ”
The Salk Institute in California has been at the forefront of the time-restricted eating phenomenon, working to understand the impacts of fasting for health and how the body reacts when its forced to fast for the majority of the day.
Researchers first stumbled upon this breakthrough in animal studies when mice were allowed to eat whatever they wanted, but only during a set time of day. The mice on the time-restricted eating plan ate what was considered a “poor diet” high in calories, sugar and fat, yet they still didn’t gain the weight that they were expected to.
However, once they had access to the same food any time they wanted, the mice’s weight gain doubled despite eating the same number of calories.
- 9-hour of access to food caused 26 percent weight gain in the mice
- 15-hour access to food caused 43 percent weight gain
- 24-hour access to food caused 65 percent weight gain
Their stunning conclusion was that periods of regularly fasting for 12–16 hours a day might dramatically impact body weight. Time-restricted feeding caused less weight gain than all-hour access for mice eating a high-fat, high-sugar diet over 12 to 26 weeks, and it also led to weight loss of up to 12 percent when applied to mice that were already obese.
MY METHOD
I eat during a 8 hour fast which last from 1pm to 9pm. Within these 8 hours I consume all of my calorie intake. After 9pm I only drink water until the next day 1pm, where I break my fast with a fast digesting protein and a healthy fat – half scoop way and coconut oil.
After fasting, I want to send some essential amino acids to my muscles so that half scoop of whey is life to my hard earned gains. After that I carry on with my regular eating. Breakfast and lunch become 1 meal. Yes, that is alot of food to eat but i break it down and make sure to eat all the food with in the feeding window.
Marina Farook 