Weight loss diet dubbed “reverse fasting” could be the best way to lose pounds.
Fasting is often met with trepidation as it can sometimes mean restricting meals, resulting in extreme hunger pangs.
However, reverse fasting does not include skipping either breakfast or dinner.
It instead changes the way and time of day that food is eaten.
Reverse fasting changes the times of meals to ensure the fasting period is later in the day.
This means that dinner is eaten at 5pm or 6pm instead of 8pm, a later time that many families choose to eat at.
This then means that the person fasts for 12 to 15 hours overnight due to the earlier evening meal.
When they wake up, they can then eat breakfast at 6am or 7am without skipping a meal but still partaking in the fast.
The fast is then when the person is sleeping, meaning fewer feelings of hunger that may have been felt in the day.
Reverse fasting works just like intermittent fasting by aiding weight loss, reducing blood pressure as well as the resting heart rate.
It works by a metabolic switch taking place in the liver where the body then uses fat for energy.
The person then wakes up with a meal in the morning, preventing the starving feeling that is felt.
The organs in the body are also believed to follow a circadian rhythm, in that digestion can slow down later in the day when the sun goes down.
Therefore by fasting during the night time, where digestion is slower, it can be better to then eat in the day during the lighter hours where digestion is faster.
It is also often equated with the caveman diet – while this means eating basic foods with minimal processes, it can also be in reference to the fasting they once did during the seasons.
A study by the University of Surrey also found that by changing breakfast and dinner times, weight loss could be enhanced.
Published in the Journal of Nutritional Sciences, 16 adults ate breakfast 90 minutes later and ate dinner 90 minutes earlier.
The study found that more than half had a reduced appetite due to the smaller time frame of eating.
Fat loss was also almost twice as much. While the study is small, the results could be used for a larger case study.
Jonathan Johnston, co-author of the study, said: “We are now going to use these preliminary findings to design larger, more comprehensive studies of time-restricted feeding.”