Late Night Snacking Makes Mice Gain Weight
You've seen it on sitcoms, the middle-aged fat guy in a bathrobe, cutting a big sandwich in the dark, by the light of an open refrigerator.
Now, a pastrami sub at midnight might hit the spot, but eating that late could lead to weight-gain, especially if you're a mouse!
Researchers found feeding mice when they're supposed to be sleeping made them fatter.
Mice are normally active at night and sleep during the day. So when scientists rearranged their schedule and started feeding them at night, they became overweight, weighing 7.8% more than normal mice.
Published in the International Journal of Obesity, experts think this could have implications for people too, because weight-gain occurred even if day-feeders ate the same amount of food as normally fed mice.
So, just changing the time you eat could screw you up! I know it happens to me, if my body clock is out of whack, I'm out of whack.
Via Reuters.
7 Comments
Add Your Comment
ADVERTISING
New
- FROM DIET BLOG
- On-Off Fasting: Does It Work?
- 400 Calorie Fix
- 5 Factor World Diet
- Quick Giveaway: Powerhouse Weight Loss Game
- FORUM
- Low Carb Atkins Diet- Tips to Cut the Carbs.
- How Can I Gain a Healthy Weight and Keep it?
- How Do I Eat Healthy at University?
- Starving Myself and Exercising, But Not Losing an Ounce?
Categories
| Body Image Celebrities Diet Pills Diets Exercise |
Fast Food Funny Stuff Success Stories Teens and Kids Tips and Tools |
RSS Feed
Follow @DietBlog on Twitter
Yes, the researchers found that if you feed a mouse food when they would normally be asleep, they gain weight. Why? Because they ate more than they normally would have.
My guess that if the researchers had removed an equal amount of calories from the mouse's day-time feeding, there would have been no observed gain in weight.
ReplyYou know I'm increasingly disappointed in this blog. It seems like the writers will go out of their way to make sure they don't mention that low carbing is the only way to lose weight. Now that doesn't apply to body builders, but 99% of us aren't doing that.
ReplyYou're joking, right?
ReplyActually, I've sort of experience this a bit...when I have to work a weird shift at work and am eating when I would normally be sleeping, I gain a couple of pounds. Once my schedule goes back to normal, so does my weight. Of course, it could be water weight or something, but this theory could maybe be slightly true. It could possibly have something to do with hormone levels, I suppose. I wonder if they've ever done research on people that work third shift and find out how many of them are overweight because they eat when they're supposed to be sleeping.
ReplyI think the prob with people at night is that just consume way too many empty calories & really pay no attention to the amount they are eating. Some people actually starve all day thinking they are dieting & then are so friggin hungry at night, they eat everything in sight... others, it is just mindless TV watching & eating.
ReplyI agree! I think that some people think the calories at night don't count. :) Late afternoon and night time is the hardest time to control snacking.
ReplyFriends who are nurses hate the night shift as they always say they gain weight. They use food to keep them awake and give them energy to get through the shift.
My motto is, "Don't eat when you should be asleep!".
This entry misled me somewhere I can not understand when I read this first time.
Gerry said... "when scientists rearranged their schedule and started feeding them at night, they became overweight, weighing 7.8% more than normal mice."
So I thought the scientists REALLY rearranged the mice circadian rhythm, and then, this caused a discrepancy in the next phrase saying, "experts think this could have implications for people too, because weight-gain occurred even if DAY-feeders ate the same amount of food as normally fed mice."
As the result, the title "Late Night Snacking Makes Mice Gain Weight" is wrong!
Since I read a piece of Reuters news and the abstract from the journal, I would have understand what that mean....
I think this entry is difficult to understand for me as a non-native english speaker.
Yuji from Japan.
Reply