Research
Energy balance
Meal timing is not associated with body composition (fat mass, lean mass, or BMI) in young adults, regardless of sex.
Changing when you eat will not directly change your weight or body fat percentage. Focus on total calorie intake and exercise for body composition changes. However, timing may still be useful for metabolic health markers like insulin sensitivity.
ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Meal timing was not associated with body composition (p > 0.05)... No further associations were found between meal timing and anthropometry/body composition (all p ≥ 0.068; Table 2).
Why this rating
Cross-sectional design, but robust measurement of body composition via DXA and large sample for a mechanistic study.
Source
Association of meal timing with body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors in young adults
Manuel Dote‐Montero et al. · European Journal of Nutrition · 2023
DOI 10.1007/s00394-023-03141-9
cross_sectional · n=118Cited 22×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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