If that's the case than this is another "eating less causes weight loss" study, and measuring the benefits of caloric restriction.
They don't even equate caloric restrictions between the methods they compare ?
Enormous amounts of willpower can push thru that, or a low carb diet destroys the appetite.
Either way if a fat person eats for 16 hours a day unrestricted that'll be about eight cycles of super high blood sugar and the resulting hypoglycemic insulin crash followed by about eight episodes of binge eating.
If the same person limits their food intake to only 8 hours a day either via appetite suppression due to lower carb diet, or willpower or external force, they can only get about four cycles in of super high blood sugar followed by insulin spike followed by hypoglycemic crash followed by massive binge eating.
It seems likely that four cycles of binge eating per day will cause less "metabolic syndrome" damage than eight cycles of binge eating per day. Even if the total caloric intake is the same, the body at least has more time to recover.
The above "seems" to be what they verified in the paper.
I am surprised why people who levy this critique (including yourself and Dr. Brad Stanfield on YouTube) don't simultaneously acknowledge the possibility that -- even if caloric restriciton is the main mechanism explaining the results -- time-restricted feeding may be a more effective/sustainable caloric restriction strategy than all-day calorie counting either alone or with other interventions lacking the time-restricted element (such as social support, AKA Weight Watchers).
In my own n=1 anecdote, I have lost 20 excess kg over the past 12 months (and continuing to gradually reduce) with time-restricted feeding as the primary intervention. Eliminating my continuous grazing during waking hours due to a time-based "cut off" for all eating was much more effective (in my case) vs previous strategies over decades where I simply "tried" not to snack between meals throughout the day.
It's a tool to restrict calories, which is the _actual_ thing that improves health. It's slightly less optimal if you're trying to conserve lean body tissue since you're spending more time in a negative nitrogen-balance.
Bottom line from lots of research, do the form of calorie restriction that is most easy for you to adhere to :)
Which ones? I've never seen any, so far.
IF is effort. Low carb is effort. And so on.
With TRE and even more with keto you feel satiated, insulin is way more stable so hunger is manageable. So you prevent overeating with little effort.
It's obvious that gettint into the regime takes effort, my point is that once you start it's easier to follow than a classic ipocaloric diet.
By "dietary regimens" are you talking about intermittent fasting? I find it hard to believe that "not eating for 16 hours a day" is "without any effort", or less effort than "not snacking" or "not eating smaller meals".
>The question is not if eating less causes weight loss, but which regimen is best to avoid overeating while eating to satiety.
That's what a lot of commenters are concluding, but it's not really obvious to a uninformed layman who's just reading the title. "Time-restricted eating reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome" makes it sound like the benefits are coming from the time restriction, not from eating less calories.
As someone who used to weigh a lot more, I think you'd be surprised. The first couple days are a little rough, but after that you're just not very hungry during the day. In contrast, "eating smaller meals" fucking sucked. You're still hungry, you've already gone out of your way to obtain food, and now you have to stop and keep going on with your day. Remember that people don't get fat being used to eating appropriate size meals.
- Abdominal obesity - High blood pressure - High blood sugar - High serum triglycerides - Low serum HLDL
Especially since I've read that when you equate calories most of the differencea go away in studies and meta analysis.