Calories Eaten at Night Cause Weight Gain

There are so many theories about when you should not eat. Many say not to eat at night. Some say a calorie is a calorie and when it is eaten doesn't matter. Some give an exact time i.e. do not eat after 7:00p.m. or three hours before going to bed.

A new study done at Northwestern University in Illinois on mice suggests that when you eat does in fact impact your weight. The researchers put mice into two groups each of which ate the same food. Half the mice were fed during the day when they would normally be sleeping. (Mice usually eat at night so this simulated late-night eating in people.) The other half were given the same food as the daytime eaters but ate at night when they usually would.

At the end of the six weeks mice in both groups had eaten about the same amount of calories and gotten about the same amount of exercise. The mice though that ate when they normally would have been sleeping showed an average 48 % increase in body weight. The mice that ate on a regular schedule had an average increase of 20 % of body weight.

Fred Turek, director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern and the study's senior author, acknoledges that human studies are needed to determine if when we eat does influence our weight. That makes sense. Though studies are done on mice we are not mice. I am one to think that if I eat at 9:00p.m. I will not gain any more weight than if I eat at 6:00p.m. in spite of the study suggesting that late-night eating may be worse, in terms of weight gain, than eating during normal waking hours.

People who work shifts are at a higher risk for diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. I think this is due to what shift workers eat not when but I haven't done the research! I would put money on the fact that shift workers are eating more donuts than 9 to 5 workers. Dr. Turek notes that "It's not just shift workers who are eating late. Most people eat a large percentage of their calories in the evening and continue eating late into the night."

He states that "Humans evolved from a situation where they ate and foraged between sunrise and sunset. After sunset, there were no refrigerators, no food just hanging around. You didn't eat. But today, people eat most of their calories after sunset." Source

The findings will be published in the October issue of the Journal of Obesity.

Source New York Times