Ideally, you’ll stop eating two to three hours before going to bed. “To offset these innate cravings, I have found that your first defense should be drinking a glass of water or tea, rather than heading to the snack pantry,” Kirkpatrick says. Research from 2023 shows that late-night eating could throw off our internal clocks and may be associated with higher total caloric intake and body mass index (BMI). But in today’s world, late-night cravings can add unnecessary calories that lead to significant weight gain if left unchecked. Researchers speculate that a desire to eat high-calorie foods at night helped our ancestors survive when food was scarce. Research has shown that our circadian rhythms (the body’s internal processes that follow a 24-hour cycle) raise our hunger and cravings for sweet, salty, and carbohydrate-heavy foods in the evenings. Many of us are more likely to reach for less-than-healthy foods in the evening, and you can blame your body’s built-in survival mechanisms for this.
“Snacking later into the night increases the chance of weight gain, obesity, and cardiometabolic diseases,” says Kristin Kirkpatrick, RD, a dietitian and author of Skinny Liver: A Proven Program to Prevent and Reverse the New Silent Epidemic - Fatty Liver Disease.
While the occasional bedtime snack is fine, capping off every day with sweet or salty fare may spell trouble. Who doesn’t love putting up their feet and tucking into a bowl of popcorn or ice cream at the end of a long day?
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