Americans Eat All Day But Study Shows That The Longer Hours You Fast The More Weight You Lose

Most people think they eat "thrice a day" However, that is not true!

In fact, people seem to eating "frequently and erratically" all day.

In a new app and research project that records how much we eat in a day, there are some astonishing results: Most people eat for 15 hours a day. Their daily average intake is 1,947 calories, in which more than 33 percent are consumed after 6 p.m. although just 25 percent are consumed by noon.

In a research at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, scientists studied 150 "non-dieting, non-shift-working people" at San Diego for three weeks and published the results in the journal Cell Metabolism, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"People eat as soon as they wake up and roughly eat as long as they are awake. This means they are fasting only when they sleep," lead researcher Satchidananda Panda told The Huffington Post.

"This has a huge impact on how we interpret the data on sleep and obesity/diabetes," Panda continued. "Since short sleep correlates with obesity/diabetes, it implies people who sleep less may be munching as long as they are awake."

This kind of eating during the 24/7 lifestyle of most Americans leads to a lot of concern and worry.

To conduct his research, Panda developed an app called MyCycardianClock.

Users need to register and then shoot whatever they eat or drink with the app. They can show the photograph with the geolocation and other metadata to the researchers' servers, just like a food journal.

However, the researchers wanted to record, not influence eating habits. Hence, the images are deleted from the phones, which gives scientists an opportunity to check out and locate dietary patterns over time.

In order to lose the excess pounds, a fast of 10 to 12 hours is required, in order to not merely limit consuming excess calories but also to "reset" a circadian clock that gets disrupted with the continuous eating.

Hence, eight participants who ate for more than 14 hours, were involved in order to show how the circadian clock could be reset. Hence, the participants were asked to eat for just 10 to 12 hours a day and fast for the remaining 12 to 14 hours. In 16 weeks, they found that they could lose seven pounds.

The app is still available for those who want to participate and contribute to a Salk Institute study conducted under customary academic strictures. After two weeks, the program shares a "feedogram," analysing and recording the dietary patterns.

Download the app here.