Eat For 10 Hours. Fast For 14. This Daily Habit Prompts Weight Loss, Study Finds

There's a lot of enthusiasm for intermittent fasting -- a term that can encompass everything from skipping a meal each day to fasting a few days a week. Or, how about this approach: Simply limit your daily eating window to 10 hours. This means that if you take your first bite of food at 8 a.m., you'd need to consume your last calorie of the day by 6 p.m. A new study published in Cell Metabolism offers some evidence that the approach can be beneficial. From a report: Researchers tracked a group of overweight participants who followed this approach for about three months. "Typically, people would go for an 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. eating window," explains Dr. Pam Taub, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Diego's School of Medicine, and an author of the study. During the fasting period, participants were encouraged to stay hydrated with water. Each day, they logged the timing of their meals and their sleep in an app. "We saw a 3% reduction in their weight and a 4% reduction in abdominal visceral fat," says Taub. "We didn't ask them to change what they eat," she explains, though participants consumed about 8.6% fewer calories -- likely as a result of the limited eating window. In addition to the weight loss, "we saw that cholesterol levels improved and blood pressure [levels] also improved," Taub explains. There was also some reported improvement in sleep quality, and many of the participants reported more energy.