Isocaloric means both arms received the same number of calories. Eucaloric means that number was set to hold body weight steady rather than to create a deficit. A feeding study supplies the food rather than asking people to follow instructions. Together they strip out the thing that makes ordinary fasting trials hard to read, which is that people on a short window usually eat less without meaning to.
Drawn from standard trial design vocabulary, not from this paper.
If a compressed eating window does something beyond making people eat less, then supplying identical calories to both arms should reveal it. The parent trial did that for twelve weeks in adults with obesity and either prediabetes or diet controlled type 2 diabetes, and this analysis asks what was left once intake was held equal.
Drawn from the paper's stated aim.
Thirty nine participants analysed, nineteen on the ten hour window and twenty on the usual sixteen hour pattern. Mean age sixty, mean body mass index 35.2.
Weight loss was 2.7 percent in the time restricted arm and 2.5 percent in the usual pattern arm.
No statistically significant between group differences in eating behaviour, appetite hormones, or inflammatory markers. The panel covered leptin, adiponectin, C reactive protein, cortisol and soluble RAGE, with ghrelin measured across a seventy five gram oral glucose tolerance test.
Both arms increased dietary restraint and decreased disinhibition and hunger on the three factor eating questionnaire.
The authors conclude that both patterns improved eating behaviour in the context of modest and equivalent weight loss.
| Weight loss, time restricted arm | 2.7 percent |
| Weight loss, usual eating pattern arm | 2.5 percent |
| Between group differences in eating behaviour, appetite hormones and inflammatory markers | none statistically significant |
| Eating windows compared | 10 hours against 16 hours |
| Mean age and body mass index | 60 years, body mass index 35.2 |
| Duration and sample | 12 weeks, 39 participants analysed |
Proposed by the authors This is the explanation the authors offer in their discussion. This study did not test it.
The authors expected a compressed window to change appetite regulation and low grade inflammation independently of energy intake, and they measured the panel that would show it. Nothing separated. Their own reading is that both patterns improved eating behaviour in the context of modest and equivalent weight loss, which places the effect in the weight change rather than in the schedule.
Drawn from the paper's stated aim and conclusion.
Hold the calories constant and supply the food, and a ten hour window and a sixteen hour one produce the same weight change and the same hormones.
Thirty nine adults around sixty years old with obesity and prediabetes or early type 2 diabetes, over twelve weeks with all food provided.
A larger feeding trial, which the authors ask for, or the same design in people who are not already metabolically unwell.
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