Research

Energy balance

Combining time-restricted eating (TRE) with calorie restriction (CR) significantly reduces body weight, fat mass, and waist circumference compared to calorie restriction alone in overweight or obese adults.

If you are overweight or obese, combining a moderate calorie deficit with time-restricted eating (eating within a specific window of the day) will help you lose more weight and fat than just counting calories alone. However, do not expect this combination to significantly improve your blood pressure, blood sugar, or cholesterol levels beyond what you would get from calorie restriction alone.

ModerateSupportsLOW confidence
The pooled results showed that TRE with CR reduced the body weight, fat mass, and waist circumference significantly (WMD: −1.40, 95% CI: −1.81 to −1.00... WMD: −0.73... WMD: −1.87...)
Jing-Chao Sun et al. · European Journal of Clinical Nutrition · 2023

Why this rating

Based on 8 RCTs with 579 participants; GRADE assessment rated weight loss as 'low quality' due to risk of bias and consistency issues in some studies.

Source

Time-restricted eating with calorie restriction on weight loss and cardiometabolic risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Jing-Chao Sun et al. · European Journal of Clinical Nutrition · 2023

DOI 10.1038/s41430-023-01311-w

Meta-analysis · 8 studiesCited 44×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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