Nutrition, metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases : NMCDNov 10, 2023

Effects of different 8-hour daily eating schedules on belly fat and heart health

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Mar 26, 2026

Abstract

Anticipated 208 adults aged 30-60 years with overweight/obesity will be recruited for a 12-week trial comparing different time-restricted eating schedules.

Three different 8-hour time-restricted eating schedules will be evaluated: early, late, and self-selected.
Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four groups: usual care, early TRE, late TRE, or self-selected TRE.
The primary outcome will measure changes in visceral adipose tissue (VAT).
Secondary outcomes will assess body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors.
The trial aims to explore the impact of eating window timing on the effectiveness of time-restricted eating.

Simplified

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: To investigate the efficacy and feasibility of three different 8 h time-restricted eating (TRE) schedules (i.e., early, late, and self-selected) compared to each other and to a usual-care (UC) intervention on visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and cardiometabolic health in men and women.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Anticipated 208 adults (50% women) aged 30-60 years, with overweight/obesity (25 ≤ BMI<40 kg/m) and with mild metabolic impairments will be recruited for this parallel-group, multicenter randomized controlled trial. Participants will be randomly allocated (1:1:1:1) to one of four groups for 12 weeks: UC, early TRE, late TRE or self-selected TRE. The UC group will maintain their habitual eating window and receive, as well as the TRE groups, healthy lifestyle education for weight management. The early TRE group will start eating not later than 10:00, and the late TRE group not before 13:00. The self-selected TRE group will select an 8 h eating window before the intervention and maintain it over the intervention. The primary outcome is changes in VAT, whereas secondary outcomes include body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors. 2

CONCLUSION: This study will determine whether the timing of the eating window during TRE impacts its efficacy on VAT, body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors and provide insights about its feasibility.

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Competing interests

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing interests.

PubMed

Effects of different 8-hour daily eating schedules on belly fat and heart health

Abstract

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Funding

Competing interests

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Abstract

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