Do You Eat Late at Night?

According to a recent study, weight loss may be less about what you eat and more about when you eat. Apparently, eating during eight hours of the day and fasting for the other sixteen is a surefire way to get slim and stay healthy. (Well, at least for the mice studied by Satchidananda Panda, a regulatory biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA.)

For 100 days, Panda and his team put groups of mice on different eating schedules and diets. Two of the groups ate high-fat, high-calorie food. Of those, one group was allowed to eat whenever they wanted; the other only had access to food for eight hours at night (mice are primarily nocturnal). Other control groups ate regular food.

Interestingly, the eating schedule seemed to have more influence than the type of food being consumed. The mice that ate high-fat food during a restricted period of time and then fasted were almost as lean as the mice that ate regular food. Additionally, the mice that ate around the clock became obese even though they didn’t consume more fat or calories than their counterparts on the time-restricted schedule. These mice also developed high cholesterol, high blood sugar, fatty liver disease, and metabolic problems, while their counterparts showed hardly any signs of these ailments.