Think you’re fine to indulge on the weekends as long as you stick to eating healthy the other days? A new study has found that it’s vital to maintain a regular eating schedule on the weekends in order to prevent obesity.
Weekend eating and BMI
A study published in the journal Nutrients looked at data from more than 1,100 undergraduate and postgraduate students who reported their weekend eating schedules, height and weight.
The researchers accounted for other factors that could affect BMI, including gender, sleep, chronotype and diet quality. They found that the people who had an “eating jet lag” of 3.5 hours or more had higher BMIs. (“Eating jet lag” is the term used to represent diversions from their regular eating schedule.)
Eating jet lag was measured separately for each of the three meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The scientists discovered that 64% of the study’s participants had more than an hour of eating jet lag for breakfast each weekend. It’s not surprising as many students tend to sleep in on the weekends.
“Our biological clock is like a machine and is ready to unchain the same physiological and metabolic response at the same time of the day, every day of the week,” explains one of the study authors, Trinitat Cambras. “Fixed eating and sleep schedules help the body to be organized and promote energy homeostasis.”
“When intake takes place regularly, the circadian clock ensures that the body’s metabolic pathways act to assimilate nutrients,” explains lead author Maria Izquierdo Pulido. “However, when food is taken at an unusual hour, nutrients can act on the molecular machinery of peripheral clocks (outside the brain), altering the schedule and thus, modifying the body’s metabolic functions.”
More research needed
It’s important to note that all the student participants were between the ages of 18 and 25, which could affect the results. More research needs to be done on people of different ages.
