A study suggests eating later in the day can directly impact our biological weight regulation in three key ways: through the number of calories that we burn; our hunger levels; and the way our bodies store fat.
With obesity now affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, this is a valuable insight into how the risk of becoming obese could be lowered in a relatively simple way – just by eating our meals a few hours earlier.
Earlier studies had already identified a link between the timing of meals and weight gain, but here the researchers wanted to look at that link more closely, as well as teasing out the biological reasons behind it.
“We wanted to test the mechanisms that may explain why late eating increases obesity risk,” said neuroscientist Frank Scheer, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2022 when the study was published.
I think people who obsess over calorie in calorie out reasoning drastically underestimate how variable the calorie out side can be with factors that aren’t exercise. Digestion isn’t 100% efficient, some calories are excreted. Small changes in body temperature have large changes in total energy consumption. Sleep quality, time awake, base heart rate and respiration rate, etc. all vary and have impacts on energy usage.
Parroting CICO sounds scientific because it borrows credibility from thermodynamics, but people aren’t closed systems and applying laws of thermodynamics takes a lot of nuance in complex systems with a variety of inputs and outputs.