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Glossary

Time-restricted eating

Defined in topic 40

Confining meals to a fixed daily window. In two randomized trials it added no weight loss beyond the calorie awareness that came with it: a tool rather than a mechanism. Skip it in pregnancy or with a history of disordered eating, and never begin one while taking glucose-lowering medication without your clinician's adjustment, because of the risk of hypoglycemia.

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Where this comes from

In the reference topic that owns this term

Reference topic 40, The Handrail I: Move, Eat, Drink, states the mismatch as a card: what the system evolved to expect, what it gets instead, and what happens in the gap.

Mismatch card

What it expects

Several hours a day of unremarkable movement, occasional hard bursts, loads carried, food that spoils, and water when thirsty.

What it gets

About 5,100 steps, chairs, engines, food engineered to be eaten quickly, and a hydration industry.

What happens in the gap

Systems tuned by use drift downward in their sleep, and the drift shows up decades later as disease.

The full card, and the topic behind it

What that chapter recommends

3 of the 11 graded recommendations in Reference topic 40, strongest evidence first. How the grades work.

  1. Walk, and aim at a range rather than a floor

    StrongEvidence grade: Strong. Multiple randomized controlled trials, or consistent large cohort studies with a well-understood mechanism.

    Benefit rises steeply from a few thousand steps a day and flattens somewhere around 7,000 to 8,000 in the best-studied groups, earlier in older adults.

    Read it in full

  2. Bank the weekly minutes

    StrongEvidence grade: Strong. Multiple randomized controlled trials, or consistent large cohort studies with a well-understood mechanism.

    150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate activity, or 75 to 150 vigorous, is the guideline; mortality was lowest at roughly double that.

    Read it in full

  3. Cut the ultra-processed share first

    StrongEvidence grade: Strong. Multiple randomized controlled trials, or consistent large cohort studies with a well-understood mechanism.

    This single change outranks every superfood in this chapter (Chapter 11).

    Read it in full

Related terms

The argument behind this term, its studies and its notes are in Reference topic 40 of the reference library. The book gives the practical version. Get the book.