I’ve heard you shouldn’t eat a lot before bedtime, because the calories won’t be burned off and will turn to fat. Is that true? —C.L.,Visalia, Calif.

Almost surely not. Only a few small studies have assessed whether the timing of your meals has any effect on your weight––and the results have been inconclusive. For example, the best of those studies found that women who ate most of their day’s calories in the evening lost more body fat in the first half of a 12-week exercise program than those who ate most of their calories in the morning. Researchers have no plausible explanation for why that happened. More important, the weight difference disappeared by the second half of the study.

However, there is at least one good reason to avoid stuffing yourself shortly before bedtime: It can lead to poorer sleep, since the body is still working hard to digest the food.