When You Eat Counts

Guest Bio: Courtney Peterson, PhD

Dr. Courtney Peterson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research interests include meal timing, circadian rhythms, intermittent fasting, diet quality (e.g., food groups, resistant starch), and mathematical modeling of metabolism and body composition. The overarching goal of her research is to develop novel dietary interventions to prevent, treat, or reverse type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Dr. Peterson recently conducted the first human trials of a meal timing strategy called early time-restricted feeding (eTRF). eTRF combines daily intermittent fasting (14 hours of daily fasting) and eating in alignment with the circadian clock; it is tantamount to eating dinner by early afternoon. Her research investigated how eTRF affects glycemic control, blood pressure, lipid levels, inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, energy expenditure, fat oxidation, and appetite levels in adults with prediabetes or who are overweight. Dr. Peterson is currently investigating how meal timing affects rhythms in circadian clock genes and molecular mediators associated with fasting. Previously, Dr. Peterson has conducted research on topics ranging from the effects of resistant starch on gut microbiota to the accuracy of adiposity indices in estimating body fat levels in adolescents. Dr. Peterson has received The Obesity Society’s Early Career Research Grant, and she holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and four Master’s degrees.