The 8 Hour Diet

Author David Zinczenko was on the “Today” show this morning to talk about his latest book, “The 8-Hour Diet,” which concentrates all your eating into an eight-hour time window to maximize weight loss.

“This is brand-new science,” Zinczenko told a skeptical-sounding “Today” host Matt Lauer Wednesday morning. “This is a plan that basically says you can eat all your calories in your day, but you’re doing to start eating in 8-hour windows, even just three days a week.”

Many weight-loss experts have people eating from the time they awaken to right before bed time, something that “Eat This, Not That”co-author Zinczenko says can get people in trouble with too many snacks and too many calories.

By doing all your eating from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., for example, he says, you end up practicing something called intermittent fasting. While that sounds harsh, that’s what happens while we sleep. But in “The 8-Hour Diet” (Rodale, $26.99), that fasting time is expanded a bit.

That fasting helps trigger your mitochondria – cellular “powerhouses” that regulate energy and metabolism processes, among other things.

Can you eat whatever you want in those 8 hours? While it may be tempting to barricade yourself in an ice cream parlor all day, the book lays out wiser choices for your foods.

There are eight superfoods that are touted to help maximize the weight-loss plan. They include lean proteins, leafy green vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes and beans, and berries.

And it doesn’t have to be the same 8-hour window – while you may choose 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. one day, the next day you can slide that to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. to accommodate a dinner date.

It also doesn’t have to be practiced every day – some “8-Hour Diet” testers only did the plan three days a week and lost weight.

The book also includes recipes, suggested meal plans and 8-minute workouts to boost results.