Scientists talked about the effect of early meals on weight loss

A study conducted by scientists at the Complutense University in Madrid has shown that eating earlier in the day helps reduce weight gain, which is usually predicted by a high genetic risk of obesity. This was reported by the Medical Press magazine.

The researchers conducted a linear regression analysis to test how meal timing affects body mass index (BMI) and the ability to maintain weight after weight loss, depending on the genetic risk.

The study involved 1,195 overweight or obese people. The average age of the participants was 41 years, 80.8% of them were women. All of them completed the program at six obesity treatment clinics across Spain as part of the ONTIME study. The program included 16 weeks of weight loss therapy and an assessment of the results after 12 years.

The scientists calculated the polygenetic risk for BMI using more than 900,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, and also analyzed meal times. Meal time was defined as the average time between the first and last meals of the day, taking into account weekly and weekend fluctuations. The linear regression models were adjusted to take into account the age, gender, clinic, and demographic data of the participants.

Every hour that a person postponed eating was associated with an increase in their BMI by 0.952 kg/m. In addition, each hour of delay in eating also led to a 2.2% increase in weight 12 years after treatment. This was especially pronounced in the group with the highest risk of obesity, where the increase in BMI was 2.21 kg/m2 for each hour of delay in eating. This means that people with a higher genetic risk gained more weight if they started eating later. At the same time, no such dependence was observed in the low-risk obesity groups: for these people, meal timing did not have such a strong effect on BMI and long-term weight gain.

The researchers concluded that meal timing affects weight maintenance and reduces the genetic risk of obesity, which opens up opportunities for using early meals in personalized anti-obesity programs.

On May 21, Elena Fedorova, an endocrinologist at the Academician Roitberg Clinic, warned that the problem of obesity has reached the scale of a national threat: two thirds of the adult population of Russia are overweight.

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