Getting up in the middle of the night for a snack may not have the detrimental effects on your body that you once thought it did.
According to Insider, while midnight snacking may lead to poorer choices in snack foods, a small study concludes that the timing of the snack won't actually make you gain weight. Weight gain has more to do with caloric intake and choice of snack.
Over the course of 12 weeks, researchers looked at 41 overweight adults who were on their way to shedding some pounds. Half of the group ate the majority of their total intake before 1 pm while the other half put their focus on the hours after 5 pm.
The participants all ate the same pre-prepared meals throughout the study.
By the study's end, all of the participants had lost some weight and had lower blood pressure, indicating that it didn't matter what time they ate their meals.
"We thought that the time-restricted group would lose more weight," Dr. Nisa Maruthur, associate professor of medicine, epidemiology, and nursing at Johns Hopkins University said.
"Yet that didn't happen. We did now see any difference in weight loss for those who ate most of their calories earlier versus later in the day. We did not see any effects on blood pressure either," she continued.
That said, a separate September study found that snacking later at night typically leads to more junk food intake and more calories overall. Nighttime snacking also tends to include alcohol, which also lends itself to poorer food choices.
However, when you take in your calories doesn't seem to have an affect on weight gain.
"We have wondered for a long time if when one eats during the day affects the way the body uses and stores energy," Maruthur said. "Most prior studies have not controlled the number of calories, so it wasn't clear if people who ate earlier just ate fewer calories. In this study, the only thing we changed was the time of day of eating."
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