Is 8 hours of "intermittent fasting" a day helpful for weight loss? Research says…

Many celebrities have shared their ideas about intermittent fasting in interviews, such as not eating dinner after 5 o'clock, or eating only 8 hours a day, and relying on calculating time to eat instead of calculating calories. Some people think this is a biased dietary concept, but in fact, abroad, many studies have found that eating within a restricted time is the real healthy way for the human body.

In the book "The Science of Eating", the author Custer had a near-death experience due to chest pain when he just turned 40. He therefore asked: Is it junk food that ruins your health? What foods will bring true health? He exerted the truth-seeking and solution-seeking spirit of a scientific journalist and began to delve into current dietary nutrition research, devoting himself to it for several years. The new knowledge made him completely change his eating habits, and he was surprised to find that his previous understanding of healthy eating was completely inconsistent with the results of scientific research.

The chapter "The Best Time to Eat and the Most Effective Way to Fast" in "The Science of Eating" mentions:

Two mice with identical genetic pedigree. Same size, same age, now pay attention: these two mice eat the same thing their entire lives. Not just the same feed, but the same amount. Why is one a fat mouse and the other a thin mouse?

Imagine for a moment that these mice were people. We know nothing about them. All we see is a fat man and a thin man. What automatically goes through your mind? The first suspicion might be that fat people eat more than thin people. Let me say it again: both mice ate the same feed and the same amount.

In addition, these mice were fattened with a kind of instant mouse food. So it's not too surprising that fat mice have fat on them. But the skinny mice's striking good figures require more explanation. Why is it so thin? In addition to fast food, does it also contain lactic acid bacteria or any other magical substance, which protects it from gaining weight in a miraculous way? No.

So the traditional explanation is basically left: the skinny mouse must have followed a rigorous exercise program, while the fatter one lived like a couch potato all its life. But this is not true either.

The real answer is as simple as it is surprising, and it points to an effective strategy for combating excess weight: While fat mice have access to junk food 24 hours a day, lean mice only get to eat food during certain, limited times: at night, when mice are naturally more active. Specifically, the lean mice had access to food for eight hours throughout the night and fasted for the other sixteen hours.

Today's mice are very smart and learn quickly in this situation, filling their stomachs in the "short" time when there is food. The result was that they ended up eating the same amount as the mice that had always been fed. Despite this, they remain slim. Not only that, they also aged surprisingly healthily, which is all the more remarkable given that they were not consuming a model diet. In contrast, the mice that were constantly allowed to steal food not only became noticeably fatter, but also developed typical age-related diseases in a world of overnutrition, such as high blood pressure, fatty liver, increased inflammation and insulin resistance.

If something similar can be applied to us humans, please consider how big the impact of this research result may be. (This was determined, of course, not with just two mice but with countless mice. The experiments were conducted by researchers at the prestigious Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, and the results were published in prestigious journals such as Cell Metabolism.)

After personal experimentation, the author Custer discovered:

I personally think the time period from 8am to 8pm is suitable. Although God knows I am not a master at following discipline, I don’t find it difficult to abide by this time. So I mostly eat within this 12 hour window and fast the other 12 hours. If I were to be more strict with myself and want to lose the fat that has accumulated on my body, I would shorten my time frame to 9 am to 7 pm. Experiments on mice can provide a certain rule of thumb: the shorter the time frame, the more obvious the effect. In the end, the most important thing is to find a rhythm that suits your life and allows you to live well. The rhythm you find shouldn’t taste like giving up!

*Source: "The Science of Eating - New Life-Saving Nutritional Knowledge to Fight Fat, Disease and Aging" published by Business Weekly. Author: Bass. Custer

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