Hunger associations with meal timing and adherence to meal timing recommendations for weight loss

Those who practice poor meal timing habits such as irregular day-to-day eating, eating late at night, and have a short overnight fast are more at risk for weight gain, reduced weight loss with weight loss attempts, and increased risk for developing and/or worsening health conditions such as type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease and/or risk factors for said conditions. Recent studies have identified possible factors that influence meal timing, one of which is hunger. Hunger is defined as a physiologic need to eat, and can be triggered by a rise in the hormone ghrelin. Hunger in general, or greater hunger at certain times of day, may lead to poor meal timing and/or difficulty adhering to meal timing recommendations made in behavioral interventions. The goal of our study was to determine if the overall hunger level and time of onset of greatest hunger were associated with poor meal timing cross-sectionally and lower adherence to meal timing recommendations. The meal timing behaviors we examined were eating late at night, having a longer overnight fast, and an earlier ingestive period midpoint based on published evidence suggesting these are important for weight control. We hypothesized that a greater overall hunger level and later onset of greatest hunger would be inversely associated with poor meal timing cross-sectionally and a lower adherence to potential meal timing recommendations to be applied to future interventions. Our cross-sectional study was a secondary analysis of data from a previous study on diet and energy regulation in 116 healthy adults (mean BMI 24.3 kg/m2; SD 3.8, mean age 29.4 years; SD 11.9). Both continuous and categorical meal timing outcomes were examined. The continuous outcomes were eating late at night (defined as eating past 20:00 h), length of overnight fast (defined as the length of time between the last meal consumed before bedtime and first eating occasion after waking), and timing of the largest meal, which we measured using the midpoint of the ingestive period. ...