I fully admit that I am one of those people that loves to snack. I usually try to keep it to healthy snacks, though, and tend to indulge throughout the day without thinking much of it, since I'm usually eating pretty well. The same goes for when I'm feeling peckish at night. Although I don't often have dessert right after dinner, I'll very frequently have a sweet snack before falling asleep, thinking that I'm not doing much harm. Apparently, though, I'm doing a LOT of harm to myself since new studies are revealing that, if you want to burn the most fat, you should not be eating for 12 hours (roughly between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.). But can you do that? I'm not sure I could.
Readmore ¿Qué más? How to pick a diet to burn the most calories
I don't find it very difficult to wait to eat when I wake up in the morning but I do think it is going to be pretty hard for me to not snack before going to bed around midnight. I think I could keep it to not eating for eight hours, sure, but 12 hours? That would be really difficult. The science seems to be saying that this is exactly what we should be doing, though. According to Satchin Panda, PhD, associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, there is an explanation for this method:
Your body is more prone to burn fat at certain times of day and store fat at other times. Staying up and eating late is a very recent phenomenon in human history. It takes a few hours to use up the day's glycogen stores. Eating only between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and then not eating for at least 12 hours, should give your body enough time to burn all of the stored glycogen plus some fat every night. Fasting at night can even override most of the negative effects of an unhealthy diet, including weight gain.
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It's interesting to note that Panda's study found that mice who ate a high-fat diet throughout the day became obese and diabetic while mice that ate the same diet but only over 12 hours during the day didn't gain weight and stayed healthy. I mean, honestly, this all sounds pretty astounding to me. Not eat for 12 hours and I can eat junk food during the other 12 hours? That honestly sounds like a dangerous proposition.
Do you think it's true you can eat unhealthy for 12 hours and still maintain your weight? Share with us in the comments below!
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