TREAT to Improve Cardiometabolic Health

Overview

Over half of American adults have overweight or obesity and are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Although caloric restriction has many health benefits, it is difficult to sustain overtime for most people. Time restricted eating (TRE), a novel type of intermittent fasting, facilitates adherence to the intervention and results in weight loss and improvement of metabolism. The investigators propose to examine the efficacy of self-monitoring and TRE (10-h/d) vs. self-monitoring and habitual prolonged eating duration (HABIT) (13 hours/d) on weight loss and body composition, metabolic function and circadian biology, in metabolically unhealthy adults aged 50 to 75 y old, with overweight or obesity. The investigators hypothesize that TRE, compared to habitual long duration of eating, will decrease cardiovascular risk burden.

American adults have a high prevalence of overweight, obesity and prediabetes. Small weight loss delays the progression to type 2 diabetes and decrease cardiovascular risk, yet adherence to long term calorie restriction is difficult to sustain. There is an urgency to find effective, easy-to implement and sustain, and affordable life style interventions. Restricting the food intake interval, or time restricted eating (TRE) has been shown in small-scale pilot studies to result in weight loss and improve metabolism, while being less challenging than calorie count. We propose to rigorously assess the efficacy and sustainability of self-monitoring with and without TRE, administered via a smartphone application, on weight loss and decreased cardiovascular risk. To achieve this goal, metabolically unhealthy mid-life adults with overweight or obesity who habitually eat for more than 13h/day, will be randomized to a self monitoring and restricted eating window to 10h/d (TRE) or to a self-monitoring and habitual eating window (13h, HABIT), and followed up to 12 months. Ambulatory measures of food intake, sleep, physical activity and glucose, and outpatient well controlled studies will be done to determine the effect of TRE versus habitual eating duration (HABIT), as well as the mediators of these effects. Hypotheses: 1) TRE vs. HABIT will result in decreased fat mass, measured by quantitative magnetic resonance, and effect mediated via decreased daily total energy intake, measured by double labeled water; 2) TRE vs. HABIT will result in lower insulin resistance, lower glycemia and shift in fuel utilization preferentially to lipid mobilization; 3) Adherence to the TRE intervention will be associated with greater weight loss at 3 months and weight maintenance at 12 months. Results from this study will provide important insights into understanding the physiological and molecular interactions between restricting daily eating interval and metabolic function, and could provide evidence for using TRE interventions to improve metabolic health and decrease cardiovascular risk in the large number of mid-life and older Americans in great need of life style intervention.