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Late Night Eating: Bad Idea or Just Not Ideal?

Anytime late night eating comes up, it’s hard not to think back to an admittedly brilliant marketing campaign from Taco Bell, which branded “Fourth Meal” back in the mid-2000s. If you’re headed home after working the evening shift, or when you’re studying late, or perhaps out for drinks and good times with friends, why not take the little chihuahua’s advice to stop and grab a chalupa?

Since that time, the scientific community has looked more closely at the idea that eating late at night might be more detrimental than at other times of day: in other words, that 350 calories from a Chalupa Supreme is metabolically worse for us if we eat it at fourth meal than if we eat it at 4pm.

It’s really tough to organize a study or studies to definitively answer a question like this. But it does seem like the preponderance of the evidence suggests that, at minimum, calorie intake late at night might be a smidge worse than those same calories consumed earlier in the day. Let’s take a look at a possible reason why:

Disrupting Circadian Rhythms

The main rationale here is likely that your circadian rhythms – the internal clocks that run through every cell and every organ in your body – are disrupted when we eat at times that go against the timing of our desired daily patterns. This daily pattern is called your chronotype, describing times of day at which your body prefers to be most awake and active: early birds are morning “lion” chronotypes, night owls are evening “wolf” chronotypes, with more than half the population falling in the intermediate “bear ” chronotype category.

If we eat late at night, the reasoning goes, does this fool our body into thinking it’s a different time of day than at actually is, which messes with our circadian rhythms. This disruption can be especially pronounced in those who aren’t predisposed to evenings who are working late nights or overnight shifts, others who travel frequently across multiple time zones, and still others who experience ‘social jetlag’ (going to bed at 10pm during the week, but 2am on the weekends, for example).

One of the more interesting data sets in this discussion is a study showing that in a 20-week weight loss study comparing timing of lunch meals in a Spanish population living on the Mediterranean coast (where lunch comprises 40% of their daily calories), those who ate lunch before 3pm lost 4-5# more than those who ate lunch after 3pm. That’s a significant difference in weight loss over that short period of time, however it’s not possible to say that a late lunch automatically begets a late dinner, let alone eating again even later in the evening. It’s also worth noting that a 3pm lunch in the United States is quite late for most, and that many of the folks in this study may be evening chronotypes (or at minimum, fully adjusted to the Spanish Mediterranean way of life that stretches later into the evenings) which could limit the broader applicability of a study like this.

Looking at it through a slightly different lens, data on intermittent fasting (defined as confining eating to a certain window of time during the day, typically in the 6-8 hour range) suggests calorie restriction through intermittent fasting is no more beneficial than calorie restriction without limiting the time of day one can eat. Is it possible one’s eating window is excessively late? Yes, but in this study, participants on the intermittent fasting side were restricted to an 8am to 4pm window. It’s also not clear in this data that chronotype was accounted for, which might factor into the results as well, though this intermittent fasting window would align with the most-common (intermediate) chronotype.

Breakfast Like a King, Lunch Like a Prince, Dinner Like a Pauper

More generally, there is evidence to suggest that shifting more of your calories to earlier times in the day can be beneficial. This study, which looked exclusively at women with overweight or obesity (average BMI 32 kg/m2), compared meal size and calories eaten in descending order (biggest meal at breakfast, smaller lunch, even smaller dinner) to ascending order (smallest meal at breakfast, bigger lunch, biggest meal at dinner). Each group in the study got to experience both descending and ascending orders, with each group losing substantially more weight when they were eating their biggest meal at breakfast and reducing meal size from there. This isn’t a direct comment on late night eating, per se, but does hint at the idea that a large meal (and other late night calories) closer to bedtime may not be ideal.

Maybe It’s Just the Calories

The truth is, most of us who eat late at night don’t eat our lowest-calorie options in the late dinner or post-dinner timeframe. If we’re not eating for convenience/indulgence because we’re working late, studying late, or out on the town, we might be home watching TV with someone in the family, our evening routine inclusive of a salty snack. Or we get prompted by a commercial for something crunchy and delicious (sadly, there aren’t a ton of fruit and veggies commercials on TV or streaming services at any hour). It’s hard to really see where an apple or a handful of carrots at 9pm would be of tremendous harm, if that’s all we’re having. But if we’re taking in more calories, those add up regardless of the time of day, though the late night timing might make their metabolic impact slightly more detrimental.

Other Downsides

Apart from the potential impact on weight, late night eating can cause other health issues. For one, many who eat within 1-2 hours of getting horizontal for sleep find themselves more likely to have reflux or heartburn. In itself, this is painful, but it’s also a potential disruptor of sleep. Salty late night foods might lead to water intake that then causes nighttime urination that disrupts sleep, or foods that are high in water (mostly fruits and vegetables, or soup or even yogurt) and eaten late can also lead to nighttime urination. Frequent disruptions in sleep overnight can then lead to excess cravings or hunger on the subsequent day, which can lead to weight gain or, at minimum, present another obstacle to weight loss.

Strategies to Limit

There are a number of behavioral strategies that might help limit late night eating. When you are interested in weight loss, it is always worth trying to reduce late night eating to see if it makes a difference. It’s almost certain that if eliminating or reducing late night eating decreases your total daily calorie intake, it will be helpful for weight loss (especially if it doesn’t leave you fighting additional hunger pangs). It’s an open question, however, if you are simply moving the same number of calories earlier in the day, whether that will be as helpful.

It’s also worth noting that there are multiple categories of medications now that might assist with late night eating. Primarily this refers to medications that can (and will) be in your system at night without disrupting sleep. Among the older classes, topiramate is a medicine that can be taken at night – it even makes some patients feel a bit groggy or dopey, which might aid sleep onset, though it is not meant as a true sleep aid. We use topiramate regularly to address night eating. The weekly GLP-1 medications, semaglutide and tirzepatide, by virtue of their mechanisms of action that keep them in your system around the clock for a full week, are also often excellent at curbing excess night eating.

If night eating is a concern for you, book an appointment with us today. We’ll talk over behavioral strategies in detail to try to limit night eating, with medication available as another potential layer of support.

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