Scientists reveal the exact time of day you need to eat if you want to lose weight
EATING late at night could be making us fat, a new study shows.
Munching after dark can directly impact how many calories we burn, how hungry we get, and the way our bodies store fat, researchers found.
Scientists previously agreed there is a link between what time you eat your last meal of the day and weight gain.
But experts now have a better understanding about why.
Sixteen participants with a BMI in the overweight or obese range underwent two six-day tests during which their eating and sleeping habits were tightly controlled.
Throughout one, they ate three meals a day – breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm and dinner at 6pm.
The other schedule saw the times shifted by several hours, so breakfast was at 1pm, dinner 6pm and supper at 9pm.
Blood samples showed that when eating later, the participants’ levels of leptin, the hormone that tells us when we’re full, were lower across 24 hours.
This suggested they were hungrier, so more likely to eat more, and calories were being burned at a slower rate.
The research, by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, also found that eating later led to more fat being stored through adipogenesis.
And the process that breaks fat down, known as lipolysis, was reduced.
Combined, these changes can increase the risk of obesity, and therefore diabetes and cancer, the team warned.
Nina Vujovic, PhD, a researcher in the Medical Chronobiology Program in the Brigham’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, said: “We found that eating four hours later makes a significant difference for our hunger levels, the way we burn calories after we eat, and the way we store fat.”
The authors, whose work was published in Cell Metabolism, added: “These findings show converging mechanisms by which late eating may result in positive energy balance and increased obesity risk.”