If you struggle to control your weight and find diets difficult to stick to, then you’re not alone. Millions of people across the UK have difficulties maintaining their weight. The late Dr Michael Mosley guided countless individuals towards weight loss and life transformation.
Although Dr Mosley died in 2024, his advice continues to help countless people with their weight and their health. For those who find conventional dieting particularly challenging, the renowned expert shared one effortless method to drop pounds almost imperceptibly. The secret lies simply in modifying when you consume your meals. Dr Michael offered several dietary programmes for weight management: The Very Fast 800, The New 5:2, and Way of Life.
Yet there’s one straightforward adjustment that anyone can implement, potentially yielding significant results for your figure: consuming your evening meal earlier.
He previously described how his demanding schedule as a working father meant he was “well after 9pm” before sitting down to dinner.
“More recently, we’ve made an effort to start eating our dinner by 7.30pm, as well as avoiding too many late-night snacks,” he revealed. Dr Michael then disclosed why this approach proves “good for the waistline”.
He referenced recent research conducted jointly by the University of Nottingham and Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
The study’s researchers enlisted 82 healthy but overweight women to participate in a weight-reduction programme.
He detailed: “The women didn’t normally finish their evening meals until well after 10pm, but now half were asked to finish their eating by 7.30pm at the latest.
“After 12 weeks both groups had lost weight, but those who changed to eating earlier in the evening had lost an average of 15lb, compared with less than 11lb for the late eaters.
“In other words, just by changing the time they ate, the early eaters had shed an extra 4lb. They also lost an extra inch around the waist and experienced greater improvements in their cholesterol and blood fats,” the nutrition expert continued.
Dr Michael explained that this wasn’t down to the late-eating group consuming more calories, as both groups maintained roughly equivalent calorie intake.
Rather, he suggested that researchers believe late-night dining can disrupt the genes controlling your body clock, potentially increasing the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Writing in his Daily Mail column, the nutritionist elaborated: “Further proof that late-night eating really does alter your ability to handle food comes from a recent study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the U.S.
“[It] which found that when healthy volunteers had their dinner within an hour of going to bed, they burnt 10% less fat overnight than when they stopped eating three hours before shut-eye.”
He noted that our bodies struggle to process large amounts of food during nighttime hours, warning that a “midnight snack will have a worse impact” than identical food consumed earlier in the day.
