Is A Big Lunch The Secret To Slimming?

Eating the majority of calories in the middle of the day could shave off inches

- Natalia Lubomirski

If you’re trying to drop the pounds this January, chances are you’ve prepared yourself a light lunch – soup (no bread), perhaps, or crudités and low-fat houmous. You may think you’re being virtuous after your off-the calorie-chart Christmas indulgence, but a new study has revealed that consuming a low-calorie meal in the middle of the day could be working against you. It’s finally time to load up your lunch plate…

Midday munchies

According to new research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, when we eat is becoming just as important as what we eat. Scientists have found that eating the bulk of our daily calories at lunchtime, as opposed to dinner, could help us lose fat over time. So that means switching our cucumber salad for chicken curry and those dry crispbreads for a bowl of pasta.

The study recruited 80 overweight and obese women between the ages of 18 and 45. All the volunteers had 15% of their daily food allowance reserved for breakfast and 15% for snacks. However, half of the recruits ate their biggest meal of the day at lunchtime – 50% of their calorie intake – and the other half had the same portion for dinner. The remaining 20% of their daily food allocation was then assigned to either dinner or lunch, depending on the group.

On top of this calorie splitting, the women ate a diet that was high in carbs and low in saturated fat. To break it down – 17% of the calories came from protein, 23% from fat and 60% from carbs. Plus, they ate 400g of fruit and vegetables. They also completed one hour of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, five days a week.

The results