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Raise your hand if all the reports, studies, statistics and articles thrown your way have confused you on what is the proper procedure for loosing weight and keeping it off?

There are so many facts out there on what works when trying to lower the rates of obesity that many people, in frustration are discouraged from even trying. Even as you read this article you are probably rolling your eyes and wondering, "so what is it now? If you old your breath, puff out your cheeks and hop on one legs for 15 minutes, you'll drop twenty pounds instantly?" Well it's true!

Just kidding. The truth is, older generations were able to eat steak and eggs for breakfast, a meatloaf sandwich for lunch, fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, while washing it all down with either whole milk or a shot of brandy, without having to worry about things like 'obesity' and the stretch marks and cellulite that comes with it---just maybe a heart attack.

To top it all off, exercise, unless you played a sport in high school and/or college, was unpopular and in some cases socially reprehensible. So how were they able to beat the bulge?

Scheduled, home cooked meals. That's how. They ate all those foods, at the same time everyday.

The way to loose weight and keep it off, if you haven't already reached past the point of organic weight-loss methods (meaning if you need surgical intervention) is moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day, never increasing the time, only the intensity of the work out depending on how much you would like to loose, moderate to small portions of home cooked meals, and lastly, eat your meals at the same time every day.

New research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that a carefully scheduled diet, even one high in fat, can lead to a reduction in body weight and a unique metabolism in which ingested fats are not stored, but rather used for energy at times when no food is available.

In an unscheduled diet, any skipped meal would lead the body to store the fat in expectation of a food shortage. However, when you eat at the same time everyday your body resets its circadian metabolism; convinced that it has plenty of food, the body immediately expends the food eaten as energy, even when a meal is skipped.

To test the theory that the  scheduling of meals would regulate the biological clock and reduce the effects of a high-fat diet that, under normal circumstances, would lead to obesity, researchers  fed a group of mice a high-fat diet on a fixed schedule (eating at the same time and for the same length of time every day) for 18 weks. They compared these mice to three control groups: one that ate a low-fat diet on a fixed schedule, one that ate an unscheduled low-fat diet (in the quantity and frequency of its choosing), and one that ate an unscheduled high-fat diet.

Results showed that  mice on the scheduled high-fat diet had a lower final body weight than the mice eating an unscheduled high-fat diet as well as a lower final body weight than the mice that ate an unscheduled low-fat diet, even though both the firstly and lastly mentioned groups consumed the same amount of calories.

In addition, the mice on the scheduled high-fat diet exhibited a unique metabolic state in which the fats they ingested were not stored, but rather utilized for energy at times when no food was available, such as in between meals and when a meal was skipped all together.

All of this was proven despite the fact that none of the groups exercised.

 Prof. Oren Froy of the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, at the Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, notes in a press report:

 "Our research shows that the timing of food consumption takes precedence over the amount of fat in the diet, leading to improved metabolism and helping to prevent obesity. Improving metabolism through the careful scheduling of meals, without limiting the content of the daily menu, could be used as a therapeutic tool to prevent obesity in humans."

Loosing weight, according to researchers, takes time and energy, all of which can be easily and biologically scheduled.