evenness of your protein intake can help maintain muscle mass and strength.

Now, is this the right interpretation? And what other data do we have to pull together to really answer the question if intermittent fasting hurts your muscle mass? So I want to go through this study and then wrap it into the bigger theme of intermittent fasting, protein intake strength, so you can see for yourself kind of what things you need to look for to determine if intermittent fasting or evenness of protein intake is the right approach for you. So first, this study did nothing about intermittent fasting. It didn't look at intermittent fasting at all.

It was not a randomized study. So it's titled Evenness of Dietary Protein Intake is positively associated with lean mass and Strength in Healthy women and was published in Nutrition Metabolism Insights. Now this is a low level quality study.

It was an observational study. They just looked at 192 charts. They looked at food frequency questionnaires from these women, all women, and they separated the day into three time periods.

And they looked at those who ate their protein more evenly throughout the time periods versus those who didn't. And those who were more likely to eat evenly through those three time periods and get their protein in those time periods had a higher association of having greater strength testing and more lean body mass. Interestingly, it was more pronounced in women over 60, as long as they were eating 0.4 grams per kilo in those three times. So 1.2 grams per kilo.

Now, interestingly, we know if you eat more, there's more of association, right? 1.6 grams per kilo has an even higher association with strength and improved muscle mass. So this was already sort of on the low end of what they looked like, but again, not randomized.

Right? Healthy user bias, confounding variables, all those things that come into play when you're looking at observational studies with food frequency questionnaires and trying to associate a nutrition pattern with some sort of health outcome. But it's suggestive and it brings up the question, well, do we need to eat protein throughout the day? Do we need to have our three meals? Could intermittent fasting, if we were only having two meals or one meal, hurt us in these areas? And this is what brings up the bigger topic, which I think is even more important. And look, intermittent fasting has been a hot topic for a long time, for weight loss and for improved metabolic health.

It's a good way to reduce your calories without really being all that hungry. It can reduce your insulin levels. And just practically, if you're cutting out the junk you eat at night and maybe the sugary breakfast cereals or just grabbing a bar out the door for breakfast, if those are the meals you're cutting out and you're focusing more on sort of the home prepared meals, whole food meals, of course you're going to see a benefit in your health.

But what's interesting is the initial data behind time restricted eating or intermittent fasting looked really encouraging. There was weight loss, improved metabolic health without any real concerns about body composition. Then came a couple studies.

Actually, two or three studies then suggested that, well, actually maybe there's a decrease in lean mass for those who are doing intermittent fasting. And that's where the specifics come into play. Because in a lot of those studies, it wasn't specified what you eat, right.

Just cut down on your food, doesn't matter what you eat the rest of the day, cut down on your time window. Well, that's one way to do it. But what about protein? What about if you're overeating calories in that time window? Those are really important features when it comes to time restricted eating and intermittent fasting.

So I think it's really important to walk away from this study and this whole discussion with the idea that, okay, intermittent fasting or time restricted eating is a tool. It's a tool that can help with weight loss. But like any tool, like any medicine, it can have potential side effects.

What are those side effects? Well, the side effects are if you shrink the amount of time or the number of meals you're eating, you may be missing out on certain things, micronutrients, protein being two of the biggest ones. So that's why at diet Doctor, we're big proponents of making sure you get adequate protein. If you ate three meals a day, fine.

If you're going to eat two meals a day, that's okay. But you better crank up the protein intake on those two meals if you're going to do that time over time, because you want to make sure you're getting enough protein. Now, that could be hard if your goal protein intake is 100 grams per day and you have to do 50 at each meal.

I've heard a lot of feedback from women that is hard to do. Not to be so gender specific, but I haven't heard it as much from men. But for anybody, it can be hard to get 50 grams of protein at each meal.

That's why I would recommend for a lot of people who struggle to do that. If you're trying to eat within a time window, you can actually add a snack in between a high protein snack.

That will help you get your protein intake. Or maybe you do two meals a day, one day, three meals a day, the next day, so that you're making sure you're cycling your protein levels to make sure you're getting adequate protein. Because that's what really helps with lean muscle mass and strength, especially when combined when resistance training.

So when you eat may make a difference when it comes to metabolic health, weight loss, insulin levels, but how much protein you eat is going to be the most important factor when it comes to strength and lean muscle mass, especially when combined with resistance training. So you need to combine those two concepts, and that's what I really want you to walk away with. Again, time restricted eating.

Intermittent fasting is a tool that you can use, but you need to be wary of these factors, especially the protein and micronutrient factor, and combine that with the concept of time restricted eating. We also have a whole educational guide on OmAd or one meal per day, and we actually recommend that you don't do Omad every day for exactly that reason. Chances are you're going to be protein and micronutrient deficient.

Doesn't mean everybody is. Some people can sit down and get 100 grams of protein at one meal or more, but for a lot of people, that's hard. So maybe using Normad as an intermittent tool, but making sure your overall protein intake is still adequate.

So I would not interpret this study as saying time restricted eating automatically reduces your lean muscle mass. But it certainly can.

And again, this study had nothing to do with time restricted eating, but it's sort of the way we interpret it. But some of the other studies show that it certainly can, and that's why you have to guard against it. And if you do that, then time restricted eating can be a very useful tool to use to help you on your path for healthy weight loss.