What is in the news?
by Ngozi Osuagwu, MD | October 9th, 2022
When a patient comes to my office for their annual well-woman exam, one of the questions I always ask is – “what are your health goals?” The number one response to that question is, “I want to lose weight.” I suspect my patients are not alone, which is why this past week, most news media was sharing the results of the study published in Cell Metabolism on October 4, 2022. Since it was big news this week, I thought I would share the information in case you missed it.
This was a study done in Norway. They had 131 overweight/obese women participants and divided them into four groups.
Group #1 – women who can keep doing what they usually do.
Group # 2 – Women on a time-restricted diet – these women could eat anything they wanted but only within 10 hours each day. This means 14 hours of the day – they did not eat. In the United States, we call this intermittent fasting.
Group # 3 – These women did high-intensity interval training (HIIT) three times a week for 35 minutes. Click here on a previous blog on HIIT.
Group # 4 – These women did both a time-restricted diet and HIIT.
The study lasted for seven weeks.
The results:
The women who combined time-restricted eating and HIIT improved their glucose control (their hemoglobin A1c decreased) and reduced the fat around their abdomen. You still benefit from doing each alone, but the combination works well.
What does this mean? The next time I ask, “What are your health goals?” and the response is, “I want to lose weight,” – I can suggest combining time-restricted eating with HIIT.
