Research
Hormonal
Shifting caloric intake to the resting stage (daytime for mice) promotes obesity, while shifting it to the active stage (nighttime) protects against obesity, independent of total 24-hour caloric intake.
For humans, this suggests that eating more during your active/waking hours and less during your rest/sleep hours may support weight management, even if total calories remain constant. This aligns with the concept of time-restricted eating focused on the active phase.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
we found that an increase in the ratio of daytime to nighttime feeding promoted weight gain, whereas a decrease of this ratio rebalanced energy expenditure to counteract obesity.
Why this rating
Controlled animal study with clear mechanistic pathways and pharmacological validation.
Source
Circadian intervention of obesity development via resting-stage feeding manipulation or oxytocin treatment
Guo Zhang et al. · American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism · 2011
DOI 10.1152/ajpendo.00196.2011
mechanism_onlyCited 169×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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