Calorie Restriction with or Without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss

nejm.org

7 points·rrauenza··6 comments

I read the results but don't see how they can draw the conclusions they did from them.

The results stated an additional 27% mean weight loss for those participants who were also using time-restricted eating, but then declared that time-restricted eating "was not more beneficial".

I understand that the statistical confidence may be low, but surely these results are "may be beneficial" rather than a hard "not more beneficial"?

I think the reason they say this is because ultimately physics wins out in the long run. If you look at later months, both groups lost roughly the same amount of weight.

However, the TRE group lost weight faster at the start.

Results sections typically do not try to make any inferences about the population at large, only the studied sample. They are also stated in the language of statistics - because the results failed to statistically uphold the "TRE is more beneficial" hypothesis, the correct interpretation is that the result is "not 'more beneficial'". In other words, the result "does not confirm that TRE is more beneficial for the sample".

Although the authors don't make a claim about the population overall in the Result section, they may be more optimistic about future research in the Discussion section of the article - I haven't accessed the full document.

I think they said that was for the obese population only.

This study held calorie intake constant, so it supports the standard "calories-in/calories out" model.

However, many claim that reducing calorie intake is much easier under TRE, so that's something else that could be studied.

There are all sorts of other metabolic benefits from TRE.

Weight loss is just one of them.

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