Time-restricted eating plus supervised exercise cut more weight and fat than standard care in a 12-week obesity trial

What the research found

Medical Xpress posted this on 22 October 2026. The TEMPUS trial, from the University of Granada and iMUDS, is published in Nature Communications (DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-78625-3). It enrolled 187 adults with obesity, about half of them women, for 12 weeks. Everyone received Mediterranean-diet and physical-activity education. There were four arms. The fasting arms used an 8-hour eating window. The exercise arms used supervised strength training plus high-intensity aerobic work. The primary outcome, liver fat on MRI, fell in all four groups, with no significant difference versus standard care and no significant difference among the interventions. The fasting arms lost about 2.2 kg (4.9 lb) more than standard care. Fasting plus exercise lost more body fat than standard care and more than exercise alone. Both exercise arms improved cardiorespiratory fitness. Among people who had fatty liver at the start, about 30 percent of the combination arm no longer met fatty-liver criteria, compared with 6.5 percent on standard care. A men-only extra difference in liver fat was reported and was not seen in women. Camacho Cardeñosa said that analysis does not support a conclusion that the sexes responded differently, so this card is not tagged men-only. At one year, the differences in weight, body composition, and liver fat were gone. Age was not stated. This is not a diet or training plan to copy. People who are ill, pregnant, or taking a medicine that depends on meal timing need their own clinician before they change when they eat. Not medical advice.

Evidence level: Human study. A study in people, but an association isn't proof of cause.

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