With intermittent fasting, it’s important to choose the eating window that best works for your lifestyle. Everyone may have a different schedule, but if you can swing it, Hendricks recommends stacking your calories earlier in the day. “[Getting] the majority of your calories early in the day seems to be where the research is pointing,” he notes.
Take this randomized controlled trial, for example, which put participants with obesity on the same calorie-restricted diet. The only difference between the two groups was how they doled out those calories: “One of [the groups] took 70% of their calories at breakfast and lunch, and another took 55% of their calories at breakfast and lunch, and then the rest at dinner,” Hendricks explains. “Without changing what they ate, just changing when they ate it, the group that took 70% of their calories at breakfast and lunch lost more weight [and] blood pressure went down.” Neat, no?
It’s certainly a case for a bigger breakfast. Even if fasting itself isn’t doable for you, “the power of moving your calories earlier in the day and minimizing how much you’re eating late is worth considering,” Hendricks notes.
