If you believe that when you eat doesn't really matter – as long as you eat right and watch your calorie intake – then, I’m sorry to spoil your party but you're dead wrong.

And that’s because it isn’t just the total calories you eat in a day that matter, when you eat them matters a lot too.

I am talking specially about late night eating. Now, late eaters can be of two types: some who habitually have their last meal late, and others who snack compulsorily late into the night. Newsflash? Both equally bad habits.

The real bad news is that this goes beyond just weight gain: Eating late leads to higher levels of blood sugar too, which in turn raises the risk of chronic diseases. Research too is confirming, quite clearly now, that calories eaten late may be significantly more harmful than the same amount of calories eaten earlier in the day.

The timing is so important that in one study, done over 20 weeks, it was found that those who ate their main meal after 3 pm lost less weight than those who ate that main meal before 3 pm – even when every other parameter: the amount they ate, slept and exercised, was the same.

Be Careful

Sometimes, eating late at night can actually be a signal… it could be a symptom of a syndrome called Night Eating Syndrome (NES). Here, a person follows a delayed pattern of food intake in which recurrent episodes of nocturnal eating and/or excessive food consumption occur after the evening meal. To check if you have it (or not), see if you tick even one of these two factors:

Your food intake consists of at least 25% of daily caloric intake after the evening meal.

You get up at least two times a week during the night to eat some food.

Sometimes, eating at night could also be a symptom of a binge eating syndrome. So if it is very persistent, it makes sense to talk to a specialist about it.

How Does One Put a Stop to it?

First, please understand that when you find yourself in the kitchen late at night, devouring something (whether sweet or salty is immaterial) – you aren’t really hungry. Not in the physiological sense anyway. It’s mostly either plain boredom, your mind playing tricks, or just a bad habit that you simply need to shake off. So work on these two fronts.

Identify what triggers it. Do you munch late into the night on days you stay up to watch back-to-back movies or TV shows? Or does it happen on days when you are stressed and so can’t sleep? Knowing what triggers it can help curb it better. Very often insomnia is a trigger, so you need to solve that first if you want your nighttime eating to stop. It helps to learn to relax before going to sleep; learn and practice a ritual for easing into sleep effortlessly, it’ll automatically cut off your night time binges.

Sometimes it pays to take a good look at what you are eating through the day as insufficient eating during the morning meals (especially if there is a nutrient deficiency) is a big cause for nighttime eating.

Also, make sure you have a high protein dinner, as that helps keep you full longer, and you wont feel the need to nosh even if you stay awake for a while after dinner.

Finally, if nothing works, just make a rule of having only green tea after dinner and nothing else, when the craving strikes; it will help keep your stomach busy and your mind relaxed. It definitely works for me.

(Kavita Devgan is a weight management consultant, nutritionist, health columnist and author of Don’t Diet! 50 Habits of Thin People.)