The exact time you should eat breakfast revealed – and it’s ‘more effective’ than fashionable diets
SHIFTING the time of your breakfast could be the missing ingredient you need for weight loss.
Experts say there is a breakfast time more suited to Brits that could help shift excess fat, and become healthier.
Many people will sit down to have their eggs or cereal between 7am and 9am.
But Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, suggested moving breakfast time to 11am.
People tend to have their dinner later than previous generations, at 8pm or 9pm.
It means they are eating across a much wider time window, which could increase calorie consumption.
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However, the crucial benefit of shortening your eating window is that it allows the body to fast, said Prof Spector.
“There are still people, particularly in the north of England, who eat earlier, but generally we have moved towards continental eating habits, having dinner much later like people in Spain and Italy,” he told Cheltenham Science Festival, according to
“Even those who don’t do that may end up snacking up until 9pm, making it difficult to achieve a 14-hour fasting period.
“There is a simple change people can make, by shifting their breakfast from 8am to 11am, which actually is more effective than more fashionable fasting diets like 5:2.
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“Fasting for 14 hours a day, using a later breakfast, but overall eating the same amount, is easier to achieve long-term.
“It works because the microbes in our gut have a circadian rhythm like us and need a rest period.
“Studies suggest a later breakfast to achieve 14 hours of fasting could help people to lose four to 11 pounds of weight over several months of doing it.”
Prof Spector's comments suggest that someone could also eat breakfast at 8am, as long as they had eaten their dinner by 6pm.
The method works the same, by creating a long period of time in which the gut is in a fasted state.
In fact, researchers said last week it’s better to stick to an eating schedule earlier in the day.
They found that ditching dinner - eating the final meal before 3pm - is better than skipping breakfast to lose weight.
Scientists, who analysed 250 studies, said blood sugar control is in the morning, and the “metabolism is kind of optimised (for eating)”.
Volunteers were less hungry when eating between 8am and 2pm, the researchers at University of Alabama said.
Fasting has become more popular as a way to lose weight.
Prof Spector said delaying breakfast is a much easier fasting method than diets like 5:2, in which you eat what you like for five days, then have only 500 calories for two days every week.
Another fasting regime is the 16:8, whereby you only eat for eight hours of the day - say noon until 8pm - and fast for the rest (8pm till noon the next day).
There have been swathes of research to suggest that it does work for weight loss, however it does not appear to be any more beneficial than traditional calorie restriction.
One study showed that fasting, without improving your diet, will not encourage weight loss.
Dieters fasted on alternate days but ate twice as much as usual on their eating days.
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They only lost 0.52kg over three weeks compared to people who cut their overall calorie intake by 25 per cent, who lost 1.9kg.
But those who fasted on alternate days while consuming a little more than their usual calories on the days they ate still lost 1.6kg.