Breakfast, lunch, and dinner do the body great. But do you ever find yourself answering the call of hunger during the middle of the night?
Research consistently shows that people who eat late at night weigh more than those who eat all of their food earlier in the day. According to a 2007 study published in the International Journal of Obesity, people who eat most of their food at night have higher body mass indexes than people who eat earlier in the day. In another study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, participants who ate between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. gained more weight than those who didn’t. What is it about the nighttime that makes you put on weight?
At midnight, people will rarely make chicken and salad. They will eat ice cream or chips, the high-fat or high-sugar foods that our bodies store so effectively as fat. So, during the night hours, we look for something quick and unhealthy to munch on.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study found that nighttime eaters ate 12 percent more calories than those who ate only throughout the day. The International Journal of Obesity study also found that nighttime eaters participated in more binge-eating behaviors than those who didn’t eat after dinner.
Binging on high-sugar, high-fat foods causes you to go to bed with elevated blood sugar levels. At any time of day, these set the body up for subsequent sugar crashes and weight gain, with the body quickly storing excess sugar as fat, explains Lori Zanini, a California-based registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator with HealthCare Partners medical group. But, since your body uses less sugar as fuel when you’re lying in bed as opposed to running around, potentially more sugar winds up in your fat cells when you eat those foods late at night.
Throwing Off Your Rhythm
Still, the problems with late-night eating extend far past what people choose to eat before bed.
Eating at night can lead to weight gain, even if you don’t eat excess calories. Researchers claim this is because eating at night can interfere with the body’s circadian rhythms.
For instance, insulin – the hormone responsible for getting the sugar in your blood to your body’s cells for fuel – runs along with your circadian clock. So at night (when your body thinks you should be asleep and fasting), your body’s cells become more resistant to the hormone. That means that eating large nighttime meals can cause especially high blood-sugar levels and, over time, fat accumulation, insulin resistance, and Type 2 diabetes.
What’s more, eating right before bed can disrupt your sleep to make next-day cravings a biological inevitability.
Eating, especially a large meal, late at night also increases your risk of heartburn. Esophageal reflux commonly occurs when our stomachs are full and we lie down, allowing the stomach contents to reflux into the esophagus causing discomfort and affecting sleep.
Patients who have metabolic dysfunction tend to eat high-carb meals before bed which spikes blood sugar levels. After a bad night’s sleep, the body’s levels of appetite-triggering hormones increase, while hormones that blunt hunger drop.
Eat Right at Night
It’s recommended for individuals to stop eating approximately 1.5 to 2 hours before going to bed to allow for digestion. Since food is digested better when we are upright. If you are hungry at night, make sure that you grab a healthy alternative. Fight the urge to reach for high-fat, high sugar foods and opt for a healthy protein-packed snack.
