What time you eat dinner may be just as important as what you eat for dinner when it comes to weight loss.
A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School reveals that what time you eat dinner in the evening greatly impacts how many calories you burn during the day, as well your appetite and how you store fat.
Study details were published in Cell Metabolism. Researchers were looking at
three mechanisms in the body that could explain weight gain associated with eating late. Those three mechanisms were: hunger regulation, how many calories we burn and changes in our fat tissue.
The sixteen participants in the study stayed in a laboratory so researchers could control other factors including what they ate, physical activity, sleep and temperature and light exposure.
What researchers discovered was that eating late affected all three biological mechanisms, which resulted in promoting weight gain. Eating four hours later made a huge difference in hunger levels, how the body burned the calories and how the body stored fat.
Despite the study being small, researchers feel like it was very well done and that it does make the case for people to avoid late-night eating when trying to control or lose weight.
