Will Eating at Night Make You Fat?

We've all heard the same advice: Don't eat after dinner. Sometimes it's don't have any food after 8 p.m., or make sure to skip that bedtime snack.
But that advice isn't right, says Madelyn Fernstrom, Ph.D., the Today show's diet and nutrition editor. It doesn't matter as much when you eat as how much you eat. If you don't eat at night but consume more calories during the day than you burn, you'll gain weight. But if you balance your food intake throughout the day so you can afford to eat a 200-calorie snack before bed, you'll do just fine.

Fernstrom suggests eating three meals and two snacks a day, and spacing them out so that you're eating at the times you feel the most hungry—whether that's day or night.