Don't eat for 16 hours at night and lose weight? What do you think of this article?

There is an article about a study done to mice where they could only eat for 8 hours a day and the other 16 (would be at night for humans) they fasted.  Eating the same high calorie foods as mice who ate around the clock, they did not really gain weight.  What do you think?

http://tinyurl.com/c3hjpax

An excerpt from above-mentioned study on mice:

"Even though they ate a high-fat diet, the mice who wrapped up their eating day early and were forced to fast for 16 hours were lean — almost as lean as mice in a control group who ate regular chow. But the mice who noshed on high-fat chow around the clock became obese, even though they consumed the same amount of fat and calories as their counterparts on the time-restricted diet."

I stopped reading the study there. The article says we can basically eat whatever crap food we want, just at a certain time. The author half-heartedly - almost jokingly - says an apple is better than cake, but that it doesn't really matter what we eat if we do the fast.

Calorie counting does more than count calories, IMO. It forces us to take a look at the nutritional content of the food we are eating. Calorie counting has made me choose much more wisely and I'd rather eat high quality food whenever I feel like it with no time restrictions.

Mice, they move around almost constantly. Don't see many fat mice.

I think this is really interesting! I couldn't find the full text article online but I did find a little more info on the professors page on the university website here.

This paragraph is of particular interest:

The Salk study found the body stores fat while eating and starts to burn fat and breakdown cholesterol into beneficial bile acids only after a few hours of fasting. When eating frequently, the body continues to make and store fat, ballooning fat cells and liver cells, which can result in liver damage. Under such conditions the liver also continues to make glucose, which raises blood sugar levels. Time-restricted feeding, on the other hand, reduces production of free fat, glucose and cholesterol and makes better use of them. It cuts down fat storage and turns on fat burning mechanisms when the animals undergo daily fasting, thereby keeping the liver cells healthy and reducing overall body fat.

Of course, as he says more work will need to be done in humans to understand if his findings will have similar results.

ETA: I don't think the author is claiming what you have written in the title to this thread. He never said anything about weight LOSS. He was talking about prevention of weight gain. There is a difference.

Original Post by reissue:

Mice, they move around almost constantly. Don't see many fat mice.

Maybe not a lot, but they are out there. My mother is a biologist and she had me breed and raise mice and observe their traits. We had one male who was obese. I mean, hugely, grossly obese. He ate the same food as all the other mice. At first we thought it may be environmental because he had been orphaned and I fed him with an eyedropper. But, his offspring tended toward obesity, too. However, they also had the sweetest temperments. His name was Spike.....because when I fed him with the eyedropper, the puppy milk would get on his fur and it would stick up like he had a mohawk.....

We didn't have any other mice that tended toward obesity. So yes, we didn't see many fat mice, but they do exist and our breeding seemed to show it was an inherited trait at least on his line. He only sired three litters before he became too obese to breed...but he was really good with other babies, so he'd get put in with mothers so he could be with the babies while she ate and foraged and such.....I miss those micelings......

With regard to the study, I have to wonder if they took into account reissue's point. Mice move around a lot. They have their little wheels and are driven to move around by nature...I wonder if a human doing the same thing all day would have a different result. Mice don't sleep 16 hours a day, that's for sure...

Original Post by kelrantymus:

Original Post by reissue:

Mice, they move around almost constantly. Don't see many fat mice.

Maybe not a lot, but they are out there. My mother is a biologist and she had me breed and raise mice and observe their traits. We had one male who was obese. I mean, hugely, grossly obese. He ate the same food as all the other mice. At first we thought it may be environmental because he had been orphaned and I fed him with an eyedropper. But, his offspring tended toward obesity, too. However, they also had the sweetest temperments. His name was Spike.....because when I fed him with the eyedropper, the puppy milk would get on his fur and it would stick up like he had a mohawk.....

We didn't have any other mice that tended toward obesity. So yes, we didn't see many fat mice, but they do exist and our breeding seemed to show it was an inherited trait at least on his line. He only sired three litters before he became too obese to breed...but he was really good with other babies, so he'd get put in with mothers so he could be with the babies while she ate and foraged and such.....I miss those micelings......

With regard to the study, I have to wonder if they took into account reissue's point. Mice move around a lot. They have their little wheels and are driven to move around by nature...I wonder if a human doing the same thing all day would have a different result. Mice don't sleep 16 hours a day, that's for sure...

It's less important whether the mice are active or inactive but that the activity level is constant between the groups and that the diet they were fed was in excess of the calories they burn including this exercise. Also important is whether the fat gain was due to a change in activity level but that was not their finding.