Will my weight increase if I eat at night?

Simply put: NO. But…
Weight gain occurs when we take in more energy than we need, so essentially, eating at night won’t cause weight gain. Our weight increases only when we eat more than our body requires.

In a balanced diet, you’ll usually find three main meals and a few snacks, depending on each individual’s needs. So, there’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2–3 intermediate snacks. That means dinner is one of the main meals.

However, there’s another aspect we’ll examine: Chrononutrition and circadian rhythms. This is a very broad topic, but here we’ll make just a brief reference.

• Chrononutrition is an emerging field based on the relationship between eating patterns, circadian rhythms, and metabolic health — and includes the timing, frequency, and regularity of meals.
• Circadian rhythms are the physical, mental, and behavioral changes experienced by an organism in a 24-hour cycle. For example, melatonin production begins at a certain time of day, or you experience peak coordination at another hour.

Light and darkness have the strongest impact on circadian rhythms, but food intake, stress, physical activity, social environment, and temperature can also influence them.

In humans, almost every tissue and organ has its own circadian rhythm, and collectively, they’re synchronized to the daily cycle of day and night. In humans, the MASTER clock is in the brain (called the suprachiasmatic nucleus – SCN) and, among other functions, controls melatonin production based on the amount of light the eyes receive. It also synchronizes circadian rhythms across various organs and tissues throughout the body.
Melatonin plays a key role in regulating the sleep–wake cycle.

Circadian rhythms affect major bodily functions, such as:

• Sleep patterns
• Hormone secretion
• Appetite and digestion
• Body temperature

Short-term disruptions of circadian rhythms can cause Sleepiness, poor coordination and difficulty in learning and focusing can while long-term sleep loss and the continuous shifting of the circadian rhythm can increase the risk of obesity, diabetes, mood disorders, heart problems and blood pressure problems and cancer and may also worsen existing health problems.

However, there are also different types of people. Those we call “the morning types,” the so-called evening types and the intermediates. The morning types are what you understood..they wake up earlier and their meals are earlier relatively to the evening types who sleep later wake up later and consequently eat later too.

It appears that the so-called evening types have a greater risk of weight gain than the morning types. But is this due exactly to the fact that they eat later at night or perhaps to other factors?

Let’s look at some common characteristics of evening types according to research which of course are not exclusive but are quite widespread.

• Skipping meals, particularly skipping breakfast
• Food intake, lower quality and dietary behaviors that favor weight gain and metabolic changes,
• Shorter sleep duration during the week since they sleep later but due to work, school or other obligations must wake up early. Consequently, circadian rhythms are affected. Also, this can subsequently lead to skipping, redistribution or “completion” of meals during the day, This may support the popular breakfast-skipping theory, which posits that Those individuals who skip breakfast tend to feel hungrier later in the day, leading to overcompensation of energy intake, especially at night.
• Also, it appears that evening types often exhibit unhealthy dietary behaviors such as consuming larger sizes, second helpings, experience more craving for foods, emotional and stress-related consumption and higher intake of unhealthy let’s say and energy-dense foods. . In contrast Morning types in studies had higher scores of consumption restriction, which have been linked to higher consumption of “healthy foods,” like greens and fewer energy-dense foods.

Therefore eating at night does not lead by itself to weight gain because as we said weight gain is caused by energy surplus meaning to consume more calories than you need. However, individuals who habitually eat later at night appear to eat more and consume let’s say less good choices making them more prone to weight gain.

I recommend eating at least 2 to 4 hours before sleep to give your body enough time to better assimilate the food. Leaving time between eating and lying down also reduces the risk of gastroesophageal reflux symptoms and poor sleep.

Also good quality and balanced diet. Do not skip meals and of course extremes are not needed it is understood you will go out for food and later at night it is understood that sometimes you may not manage to eat breakfast or necessarily eat later at night. Make sure however your routine is well-structured and balanced.

References