Do You Think You Could Handle The 8-Hour Diet?

It seems like a new diet that promises to change our entire bodies, lives and spirits infiltrates the news, our Facebook feeds, and our Instagram timelines every other month. Whether it's Whole30, which restricts dieters from consuming sugar, grains, legumes, processed foods, dairy and alcohol for a month, or Paleo, which follows similar rules, a consistent theme in popular diets is food restriction. 

While people tend to try out restrictive diets prior to big events and often see great short-term results, carrying over those eating habits into an overall lifestyle change tends to pose the biggest threat to upkeeping those results.

According to new research, food restriction may not be the most efficient way to shed weight and keep it off. Instead of focusing on what you put into your body, scientists have found that what time you consume your food is really the game-changer. That's where the 8-hour diet comes in.

News.com.au reports that limiting your food intake to just eight hours has been proven to support weight control, no carb or calorie counting needed. They suggest that eating breakfast around 10am, a large lunch around 1 or 2pm and dinner by 6pm can help combat hormonal and physiological factors that contribute to weight gain. Researchers found that mice who ate a high-fat diet for only eight hours a day were much less likely to suffer from liver disease, diabetes, and weight gain. Mice who consumed the exact same foods over the course of the whole day suffered from weight gain, high cholesterol, and decreased motor skills.

What's the reasoning behind all this, you ask? Apparently, when the body is constantly consuming and processing food, our insulin levels go up in an attempt to control our body's glucose levels. Lots of insulin in the body means more fat storage, which inevitably leads to weight gain. Researchers have found that at least twelve food-free hours per day (16 at the most extreme) can help you achieve the benefits of the "diet."