A recent study published in the journal of sleep called Sleep, suggests that regardless of your daytime habits, you will gain weight if you go to bed late.
Main researcher Andrea Spaeth’s study is different from others that have investigated the link between sleep habits and weight gain–this particular initiative involved more participants and more weight gain. Spaeth and the gang’s study contained 225 subjects who were all encouraged to be as sedentary as possible during the duration of the experiment. They were also given unlimited access to food.
The controlled study split groups into two: people who slept from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. and people who slept from 10:00 pm to 8:00 a.m. The former group, the night owls, ate “more calorie-dense and fat laden” foods than the latter group. Non-scientifically speaking, the sleep deprived desire comfort food.
Though it is clear that this phenomenon exists, the cause is unclear. The researchers offer no scientific-explanation, but speculative causes are pretty obvious. Perhaps night owls choose fattier foods because people who stay up late get hungrier, perhaps it is the range of foods available late at night, or the activities that cause the sleeplessness or something even more sinister–in any case, the jury is out on why midnight oil burners are more likely to cram fatty foods into their mouths than sleepy-heads.
Story via The Guardian Express