Can time restricted eating plus exercise improve glycaemic control during pregnancy?

Time restricted eating combined with exercise training started before and continued throughout pregnancy does not provide any significant impact on glycaemic control during late pregnancy, reveals a recent study.

A total of 167 participants with at least one risk factor for gestational diabetes mellitus who contemplated pregnancy were included in this single-centre randomized controlled trial. Participants were randomly assigned to either a lifestyle intervention (n=56) or a standard care control group (n=55).

The intervention consisted of exercise training and time restricted eating, started prior to and continued throughout pregnancy. The authors set exercise volume using a physical activity metric that translates heart rate into a score, with the goal of ≥100 weekly personal activity intelligence (PAI) points. Time restricted eating involved energy consumption within 10 hr/day for at least 5 days a week.

The intervention showed no significant effect on 2-hr plasma glucose level in an oral glucose tolerance test at gestational week 28 (mean difference, 0.48 mmol/L, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], –0.05 to 1.01; p=0.08).

Thirty-one participants (37 percent) in the intervention group adhered to prespecified criteria during the prepregnancy period, while 24 (44 percent) who became pregnant continued to fulfil such criteria. In the prepregnancy period, the average eating window was 9.9 hr per day, and the average number of weekly PAI points was 111. 

However, during pregnancy, adherence to both intervention components dropped.

"Pregnancy data from one participant in the control group were excluded from the analysis because of twin pregnancy,” according to the authors.