--- title: Will Eating Before Bed Make Me Fat? description: You’ve been told eating before bed is a no-no. But a little pre-slumber snack can help you sleep more soundly without packing on pounds—if you reach for the right foods. canonical: https://time.com/3020266/you-asked-will-eating-before-bed-make-me-fat/ author: Markham Heid article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-23T12:00:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:42:22.539Z article:section: Health og:title: You Asked: Will Eating Before Bed Make Me Fat? og:description: You’ve been told eating before bed is a no-no. But a little pre-slumber snack can help you sleep more soundly without packing on pounds—if you reach for the right foods. og:url: https://time.com/3020266/you-asked-will-eating-before-bed-make-me-fat/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7a7d5daa499bf987/69869ca213c79ff2901932e3/nighttime-eating-you-asked-time.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: What to eat at night og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You Asked: Will Eating Before Bed Make Me Fat? twitter:description: You’ve been told eating before bed is a no-no. But a little pre-slumber snack can help you sleep more soundly without packing on pounds—if you reach for the right foods. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7a7d5daa499bf987/69869ca213c79ff2901932e3/nighttime-eating-you-asked-time.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You Asked: Will Eating Before Bed Make Me Fat? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=4fccd0dd-5142-467c-ac8e-8b482e795cf5&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Jul 23, 2014 12:00 PM UTC  Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Jul 23, 2014 12:00 PM UTC Especially if you tend to eat dinner a few hours before bedtime or you’re very active (or both), snacking before bed will help stabilize your blood sugar levels during the long, meal-less night, explains Stephanie Maxson, senior clinical dietician at the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center. Why should you care about blood sugar? As most diabetics know, blood sugar and its attendant hormones can supercharge or deflate your appetite and energy levels, as well as mess with your body’s efforts to store or burn fat. “Having low blood sugar in the morning will cause a person to feel sluggish and make it more difficult to get out of bed,” Maxson explains, adding that low blood sugar could also wake you up or otherwise disrupt your sleep in the middle of the night. Ideally, you want to encourage stable blood sugar levels for optimal health, which will be tough to do if you’re going 10 or 12 or 14 hours without eating, Maxson says. (This is one reason she and many other nutrition experts underscore the importance of eating breakfast.) “It’s such a big myth that you don’t need any energy for sleep,” adds Cassie Bjork, a registered dietician and founder of HealthySimpleLife.com. Not only can the right bedtime snack provide the fuel your body needs to burn calories while you sleep, but a little grub also calms the release of hunger hormones that tell your body to store fat, Bjork explains. That said, a pint of ice cream isn’t going to do you any favors. Instead, you should be reaching for complex carbohydrates like whole wheat bread, non-starchy vegetables, popcorn, and fruit, Maxson says. These foods break down slowly, and so help stave off the blood sugar spikes or crashes that could mess with your sleep or appetite, she explains. For athletes, adding a protein like turkey or chicken to a bedtime snack can help with muscle repair during the night while also providing a hit of an essential amino acid called tryptophan, which is beneficial for sleep, Maxson says. And don’t shy away from a little fat, which can further slow the absorption of carbohydrates into your system, Bjork says. Some avocado or peanut butter—or a splash of melted butter on your popcorn—can help if you frequently wake up hungry or tired. ### You Asked: Your Top 10 Health Questions Answered  You Asked: Are Cleanses Healthy? Potions that claim to clear your body of toxins might sound alluring, but do they deliver? Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Eating Dessert Really That Bad For Me? Bad news for sweet-eaters—except if you end your meals with this kind of treat. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What’s the Best Way to Whiten My Teeth? Yes, teeth whitening actually works—but here's why you have to dish out major bucks to see results. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Meditation Really Worth It? From easing stress to lowering heart disease risk, focusing your mind can do some amazing things for your body. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What’s the Healthiest Sweetener? Take a taste of the unsettled science of sweeteners. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Should I Go Paleo? The pros and cons of eating like a caveman. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Cracking Your Knuckles Bad? Here's what really happens to your joints when you snap, crackle and pop. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Running on a Treadmill as Good as Running Outside? You'll fool your body into thinking it's outside with this one small treadmill tweak. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Does Laughing Have Real Health Benefits? Here's proof that everybody could use a belly laugh. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What Is My Poo Telling Me? If you listen hard enough, you'll hear all kinds of health stories from #2. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME Just be sure to avoid things like chips, cookies, cereal, or pretty much any traditional dessert food, advises Dr. Joan Sabaté, a professor of public health and nutrition at Loma Linda University. Because fiber and other digestion-slowing nutrients are typically stripped away from these foods during their preparation, your body absorbs them quickly and they tend to cause quick spikes in your blood sugar, which can make it tough for your to sleep, Sabaté explains. Anything featuring caffeine—yes, that includes chocolate—is also a bad idea at bedtime, Maxson says. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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