Eating Late Can Change How You Burn Calories And Store Fat, Depressing Study Finds

A new study suggests eating later in the day can affect our biological weight regulation in three ways: through the number of calories we burn, our hunger levels, and the way our bodies store fat.

This insight into how the risk of becoming obese could be lowered if we ate our meals a few hours earlier is worth a lot.

The researchers wanted to look at the link between the timing of meals and weight gain more closely and tease out the biological reasons behind it.

There are mechanisms that may explain why late eating increases the risk of being obese.

It has been shown that late eating is associated with increased risk of Obesity, increased body fat, and Impaired weight loss success. We wanted to know why.

16 people with a body mass index in the overweight or obese range took part in the research.

Each volunteer went through two different experiments lasting six days with their sleeping and eating tightly controlled before and after.

The participants were kept to a strict schedule of three meals a day, with breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm and dinner at 6pm.

Lunch, dinner and supper were shifted back and forth in the other place.

The team was able to make a number of observations through the use of blood samples.

Levels of leptin, the hormone that tells us when we're full, were lower over the course of a day. The calories were being burned at a slower pace.

The tests showed that the adipogenesis process that builds fat tissues, and the lipolysis process that breaks fat down, were increased.

We're looking at a combination of factors that push up the risk of being obese.

Many of the effects may be influenced by meal timing in real life.

Obesity can lead to other health issues, including diabetes and cancer, and so finding ways to stop it from developing in the first place would make a huge difference to the health of the world's population.

The study shows that eating earlier in the day can affect three key drivers of the way our bodies balance energy, and it's a change that's simpler for some people to manage than sticking to a diet.

In the future, the team wants to see more research involving more women, as well as research that analyzes how changes in bed time can affect eating times.

In larger scale studies, where tight control of all these factors is not feasible, we must at least consider how other behavioral and environmental variables alter these biological pathways underlying obesity risk.

The research has appeared in a journal.