It’s a vicious cycle.

You overeat, your body clock slows down, and instead of sleeping, you eat some more. No wonder it’s so easy to become obese.

According to a study from Northwestern University and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, overeating can throw off the timing of your body clock which also affects appetite control.

The researchers tested this in mice on high-fat diets.

As the mice gained weight, their body clocks appeared to be disrupted, causing them to eat more calories when they should have been sleeping or resting instead.

Think of it as a midnight raid on the refrigerator.

A faulty body clock can cause problems for the body and its metabolism which raises the risk of obesity and diabetes.

The problem is that once the body clock is thrown off, it creates a vicious cycle.

You overeat, gain weight, and your body clock slows down.

But the slowing of your body clock then causes you to eat more, so you gain more weight and the entire cycle just keeps getting worse.

With your metabolism adversely affected, you develop a greater chance of becoming obese and diabetic.

With the mice, they ate all the extra food during their normal rest periods instead of with their usual meals.

It only took two weeks for these changes to begin.

Let’s hope it’s not so bleak for humans.

I don’t know about anyone else, but a good, old-fashioned, high-fat Thanksgiving dinner always puts me to sleep when I would normally be awake (not the other way around).

Yet somehow, I always manage to get those extra calories in.

It’s a gift, I tell ya, a gift.