This is.

This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

Got a minute.

When it comes to diet, weight can and dive it is.

It's not just what we eat, but when we eat.

Such a Dananda Panda, a researcher at the Sakh Institute for Biological Studies in Lohoya, California.

Panda and his team had mice engage in what's called time-restricted feeding.

That is, the mice consumed all their daily calories in an 8-12-hour window, and they wound up

with markers for health that were better than those of mice free to eat whenever they wanted.

For example, time-restricted feeding reduced whole body fat, inflammation, and insulin resistance and improved the mice's glucose tolerance.

We're surprised to find that the benefits of time restrictions persist even if the mice take the weekends up.

So Binging on Saturday and Sunday did not wipe out the positive effects.

The studies in the journal Cell Metabolism.

What is very exciting about this is that it's much easier to adopt than most of the lifestyle

modifications that people are recommended in doctor's offices every day.

Gastroenterologist Amir Zarenpar, one of the study's authors.

So with this type of therapy, you don't really have to calorie count.

What really this works on is your own biology and letting your body

use its own evolutionary developed metabolic pathways to shuttle energy appropriately.

These findings are very exciting, but they're in mice.

We need to do further experiments to make sure that they also lead to therapies in humans.

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