Eating Timing and Diet Quality in Young Women with Overweight and Obesity

Dr Abhilasha Jain, Department of Endocrinology, Jain Hospital, Kaithal

Young women with overweight or obesity eat within an 11.5-hour window stretching late into the night, alongside diets low in quality and high in discretionary intake — a pattern that may offer a new target for tailored weight loss interventions.

Up to 40% of young women in Australia live with overweight or obesity, but this group is hard to reach for research and is often left out of weight loss trials altogether. So there's limited evidence on what their actual eating patterns look like or where interventions might do the most good.

Researchers set out to fill part of that gap by studying dietary patterns in women aged 18 to 25 with a BMI above 25 kg/m². Using 3-day food records rather than one-off recall surveys, they were able to capture a more realistic picture of when and what participants ate. The average participant was 22.6 years old with a BMI of 32.2 kg/m².

The data showed participants ate around 9,174 kJ per day (with a standard deviation of 2,526 kJ), starting their first meal at roughly 9:12 am — though some ate as early as 4:30 am and others as late as 12:40 pm — and finishing their last meal around 10:43 pm, with some eating as late as 2:00 am. That worked out to an average 11.5-hour eating window. Diet quality fell short of recommendations across most core food groups, refined carbohydrate intake was high, and participants reported eating takeaway at least once a day. Discretionary foods made up over 30% of total energy intake.

The picture that emerges is one of energy intake skewed toward the afternoon and evening, paired with low diet quality and high discretionary eating — a combination that prior research links to weight gain and metabolic risk. The authors are careful to note that larger studies, including qualitative and longitudinal work, are needed before drawing firm conclusions about how these patterns affect weight over time. Still, the results suggest that meal timing and diet quality could be practical starting points for weight management programs built specifically for young women, a group that has largely been left out of the conversation until now.

(Reference: Young IE, Crino N, Steinbeck KS, Parker HM. Eating patterns of young women (18–25 y) with overweight and obesity: a preliminary investigation. Nutrients. 2023 Mar 28;15(7):1652.)