Advances in Nutrition review notes that findings have “significant implications for healthcare practitioners and public health professionals.”
Time-restricted eating, a form of intermittent fasting, has emerged as a popular diet strategy in which adherents limit their daily eating window to a specified number of hours per day and fast for the remaining hours. Evidence suggests that time-restricted eating can be effective in preventing and managing obesity as well as metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Moreover, many time-restricted eating protocols eliminate the need to track caloric intake, making it a convenient and straightforward approach to weight and health management for many people.
In addition to diet, exercise is a key component of a healthy lifestyle, offering benefits such as weight management, enhanced cardiovascular well-being, improved mood, and decreased susceptibility to chronic diseases. While there is some evidence pointing to the benefits of combining exercise with time-restricted eating, the effects of time-restricted eating plus exercise compared to a diet that is not time restricted plus exercise on body composition and metabolic health have not been thoroughly explored.
In response, the authors of The Effect of Time-Restricted Eating Combined with Exercise on Body Composition and Metabolic Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis worked with the results of 19 randomized controlled trials to assess how body composition and metabolic health were affected by a combination of exercise and time-restricted eating versus exercise with a control diet, which was not time restricted. The results of their research were published in Advances in Nutrition: An International Review Journal, a publication of the American Society for Nutrition. According to the authors, “by understanding the combined effects of time-restricted eating and exercise, we can potentially enhance the development of more effective lifestyle interventions and provide personalized recommendations.”
This review’s findings “provide evidence supporting the effectiveness of combining time-restricted eating with exercise in reducing body weight and fat mass, as well as improving lipid profiles.” Specifically, time-restricted eating combined with exercise was likely more effective in reducing study participants’ body mass by an average of 4.1 pounds and fat mass by an average of 3.5 pounds when compared to the control diet with exercise. In terms of the glycemic profile, however, the authors noted that “the combination of time-restricted eating with exercise did not yield additional benefits on fasting glucose levels compared to the control group.”
Time-restricted eating protocols are often differentiated into ad libitum and non-ad libitum eating. Ad libitum eating allows individuals to consume any food and does not impose calorie restrictions within the designated eating window. In contrast, non-ad libitum eating involves specific guidelines or restrictions on food choices or calorie intake during the eating window. Interestingly, this review found significant differences in triglyceride levels and total cholesterol levels between the ad libitum and non-ad libitum eating approaches. Notably, “only the non-ad libitum time-restricted approach demonstrated improvements.”
In conclusion, the authors did point to the need for further research, specifically to determine the effects of the combined intervention among distinct population groups. Overall, however, “implementing this integrated approach may benefit individuals aiming to achieve weight loss and improve metabolic well-being.” Moreover, the authors believe that their findings have “significant implications for healthcare practitioners and public health professionals, offering valuable insights into the combined effects of time-restricted eating and exercise.”
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