Thread by @ethanjweiss

I've done a number of interviews this week about TREAT jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai….

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is:

"How do you explain that time-restricted eating worked for all those celebrities?"

I'm dead serious that I've been asked this (several times)

I usually remind the interviewer that TRE worked for me. I lost weight. But then I also remind that people tend to lose weight (in the short-term) doing a lot of things. It is one of the reasons we do randomized trials

But I have also taken to asking interviewers to imagine a scenario where we are testing a new weight loss strategy. It is called consistent meal timing (CMT). Here is a summary (taken directly from our paper):

"The intervention only included recommendations
to the timing of food intake (no recommendation for calorie
and macronutrient intake or physical activity), and
participants received daily reminders about their eating windows through the app...

...The CMT group was instructed to eat 3
structured meals per day. Snacking between meals was permitted."

That is it. Pretty simple...

Imagine then that a celebrity enrolls in our trial and gets randomized to CMT. At the end of 3 months, imagine that this person indicated by the red arrow is the celebrity

This celebrity started the trial at around 100 kg (220 pounds) and over the course of the 12 weeks, they lost ~8% of their body weight which is roughly 17.5 pounds or about 1.5 pounds per week. That is really good

So this celebrity now goes on TV to rave about this amazing new diet called CMT.

"I lost a pound and a half per week doing CMT!"

I write a book about CMT and I get testimonials from all these people who all lost over 10 pounds in 12 weeks

OK enough with the joke. I made my point. So I am absolutely not saying that TRE does not work for some people (it worked for me). I am also saying nothing about how other forms of fasting might work. I am also not saying anything about how other diets or nutrition programs work

I am saying that the average effect of this form (16:8 12-8PM) of intermittent fasting paired with no other nutrition or lifestyle changes does not appear to confer a weight loss advantage when compared to a control intervention of eating 3 meals a day & snacking when hungry

I am saying we should aspire to do properly controlled nutrition studies. Speaking of well-done studies, one of the other questions I get asked a lot is about early TRE (eating most of your calories early in the day)

eTRE is fascinating. Courtney Peterson & her group at UAB have been leading work in this area. They have an abstract recently published in advance of an oral presentation at the upcoming @ObesitySociety meetings. Here it is. Can't wait to see the details!

tos.planion.com/Web.User/Abstr…