Here's Why You Should Skip Out On Late-Night Snacking

Late night eating can be fun, but it's better to chomp down on your favorite snacks during the day. A recent study published in the journal Cell Metabolism shows us that eating during the right time is actually just as important as what we eat when it comes to weight gain.

Researchers at Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. had 400 mice ranging from normal to obese on a range of diets and time restrictions. They found that regardless of the original weight of the mice and what kind of food the mice ate and how many calories they ate, those who could only eat during a 9- 12- hour period gained less weight than mice who could eat at any time.

However, when mice were placed on a 15-hour restricted eating period, they still gained less weight than those on unrestricted eating times but with more modest benefits.

Researchers also investigated the effect of taking a break in the restricted diet routine for the weekend or with health on the mice.

They found that those fed on the weekends looked about the same as mice given access to food 9 to 12 hours a day for seven days a week, suggesting that a diet can withstand some temporary interruptions. 

"The fact that it worked no matter what the diet, and the fact that it worked over the weekend and weekdays, was a very nice surprise," said the study's first author Amandine Chaix, a postdoctoral researcher in Panda's lab.

Furthermore, the mice that had already become obese through eating a freely available high-fat diet were then had their food access restricted to a nine-hour window. Though they continued to consume they same amount of food, they dropped body weight by about five percent within just a few days and also prevented them from gaining more weight.

"It's an interesting observation that although the mice on a normal diet did not lose weight, they changed their body composition," Panda says. "That brings up the question--what happens? Are these mice maintaining their muscle mass which might have been lost with free feeding, or are they gaining muscle mass?"

In the future, researchers are hoping to examine the effects of time-restricted eating in humans.

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