For seasoned dieters, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you know all there is to know about dieting and that it’s just a matter of finding the willpower. Many people who are in this camp go for an ‘all or nothing’ approach to their diet, trying to cut down on calories dramatically by eating very little and even skipping some meals altogether.
Recent research, however, shows that skipping meals or even eating meals (lunch in particular) later than usual, can be bad for your wellbeing and lead to problems with losing weight.
The study was carried out by speaking to 420 people who were embarking on the same weight-loss programme, and asking them about the time of day when they tended to have lunch. Those who opted for a late lunch were found to lose around 25 percent less weight than those who lunched earlier. For the purposes of the study, ‘late’ was anybody who ate lunch after 3pm.
It is worth noting, however, that this research was carried out in Spain, where lunch is the largest meal of the day. Therefore habits relating to this meal may not translate into the equivalent results in countries such as the UK where lunch is a light meal, and the evening meal is the main form of sustenance. Researchers also cannot isolate the factor of eating late lunch and be totally sure that it is this one eating habit that caused the lower levels of weight loss in this particular group.
Many people do believe, however, that it is better for your wellness if you eat your big/main meal earlier in the day (harking back to the old adage that you should breakfast like a king), but in fact there is very little scientific evidence to support this so far. This new study may be one of the first to back up the theory about eating earlier in the day, but it may also be due to the fact that late lunchers had left it too long between meals, thus slowing down their metabolism, rather than being purely due to the lateness of the meal.
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