CLAIM:
Sleeping late on weekends can negatively affect your mood, weight, and overall health by disrupting your body’s internal clock.
FACT:
While extra sleep may temporarily reduce tiredness, large shifts in sleep timing can disrupt the body’s internal clock, a phenomenon known as social jet lag, which has been linked to mood changes, weight gain, and metabolic issues. Experts caution that weekend catch-up sleep does not fully compensate for chronic sleep loss and may, over time, increase the risk of conditions such as insulin resistance and cardiovascular problems. Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule throughout the week, rather than relying on weekend recovery, is considered more beneficial for long-term health.
In this fast-paced, demanding work environment, many of us push ourselves hard during weekdays and plan to catch up on rest over the weekend. It’s common to say, “I’ll just wake up late on Sunday.” But have you ever wondered if sleeping till late on weekends might actually do more harm than good?
In a viral Instagram reel posted by fitness coach and influencer Priyank Mehta, who has around 10 lakh followers, this common habit is presented as a potential health risk. The reel, which has garnered over 6.05 lakh views, 7,292 likes, and 13.4k shares, is framed as a conversation between Mehta and a woman, highlighting the concept of “social jet lag.”
Mehta starts by warning, “It’s 11 o’clock. Sleeping late on a Sunday can cause mood swings and weight gain.” The woman laughs and brushes it off as nonsense, insisting that she just wants to sleep.
He explains, “Have you heard of social jet lag?” The woman asks what that is. Mehta continues, “When we wake up at 7 a.m. all week and suddenly wake up at 11 a.m. on the weekend, our circadian rhythm - the internal clock - gets disrupted. The body thinks it’s in a new time zone. This can affect mood and even contribute to weight gain.”
He adds that changes in sleep patterns often lead to late-night snacking. “When your internal clock shifts, you end up consuming more calories at night on weekends,” Mehta says.
The woman acknowledges that weekend binge eating is common.
Mehta goes on to warn about long-term effects, “Chronic sleep disruption can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Many people think that sleeping extra on weekends reverses all this damage, but it doesn’t work that way.”
When the woman asks for a solution, Mehta suggests a practical approach. “I understand you feel sleepy. Instead of sleeping late, take a 20-minute nap in the afternoon. This helps recover from weekday sleep deficit without messing up your internal clock.”
The woman agrees, realising that short naps are a better option than sleeping in late.
What does the science say?
Research over the past decade shows that while regularly getting too little sleep is harmful, sleeping extra on weekends is not an easy solution and may have its own downsides.
A large 2017 meta-analysis examining the health effects of short sleep duration analysed data from 153 prospective cohort studies involving over 5.1 million participants. The researchers found that sleeping less than the recommended duration was significantly associated with higher risks of mortality and several chronic diseases. Short sleep was linked to a 12 per cent higher risk of death, along with increased risks of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and obesity. The authors noted a clear linear relationship between mortality risk and sleeping less than six hours, concluding that improving sleep duration could play a role in reducing long-term health risks.
However, whether sleeping longer on weekends can reverse this damage is less clear. A controlled laboratory study published in 2019 examined whether weekend “recovery sleep” could prevent metabolic problems caused by repeated sleep restriction. Healthy young adults were assigned to either adequate sleep, chronic sleep restriction, or sleep restriction followed by unrestricted weekend sleep. While participants slept about an hour longer during the recovery weekend and temporarily reduced late-night calorie intake, the benefits did not last. When weekday sleep restriction resumed, their circadian rhythm was delayed, body weight increased, and insulin sensitivity declined. The researchers concluded that “weekend recovery sleep is not an effective strategy to prevent metabolic dysregulation associated with recurrent insufficient sleep.”
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Evidence from adolescents points to similar concerns. A 2022 nationally representative study from South Korea examined sleep differences between weekdays and weekends among junior high school students. The researchers found that adolescents reported a weekday–weekend sleep gap of 96 to 133 minutes. Larger sleep differences were associated with concentration difficulties, aggression, withdrawal, and lower life satisfaction. The study noted that sleep timing differences were more strongly linked to emotional and mental health outcomes than physical health, highlighting the psychological impact of irregular sleep schedules.
More recent adult data strengthen the link between weekend sleep shifts and cardiometabolic risk. A 2023 longitudinal study using data from Czech households examined “social jet lag”—the difference in sleep timing between workdays and free days. The researchers found that individuals with higher social jet lag had significantly elevated total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, particularly among those over 50. “Higher social jetlag was significantly associated with increased levels of total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (cardiovascular risk markers),” the authors reported, adding that working from home reduced social jet lag and improved sleep duration.
A more recent 2025 review explains that weekend catch-up sleep affects two competing biological processes. On one hand, extending sleep duration helps compensate for weekday sleep debt and may support daytime functioning. On the other hand, shifts in sleep timing can create social jet lag—“a discrepancy between the biological clock and the social clock”—leading to circadian misalignment. This misalignment, they note, has been linked to poor sleep quality, depression, metabolic disturbances, and other diseases. The review concludes that “the protective effect of weekend catch-up sleep duration on the homeostatic process (compensating for sleep debt) and the potential impact of weekend catch-up sleep timing on the circadian process (circadian misalignment) contradict each other,” underscoring the need for more nuanced sleep guidelines.
What experts say
Dr Rashi Agrawal, an endocrinologist at Sir H.N. Reliance Hospital, Mumbai, said that the foundation of good health lies in maintaining a regular sleep cycle, not compensating for lost sleep on weekends. “For a healthy adult, the ideal sleep duration is around six to eight hours every night, and it should be largely uninterrupted,” she explained.
According to Dr Agrawal, sleep timing is just as important as sleep duration. “Ideally, one should be asleep by around 11 p.m., because cortisol levels - the body’s primary stress hormone- are naturally at their lowest at that time,” she said. Staying awake beyond this window can backfire. “When a person sleeps late, cortisol levels remain higher, which disrupts the circadian rhythm. This can contribute to weight gain, worsen insulin resistance, and lead to stubborn abdominal fat,” according to her.
She added that this is why the idea of “catching up” on sleep does not really work. “There is no true compensation for sleep debt. Our sleep–wake cycle runs on a 24-hour rhythm, and it needs to be regulated every single day.”
Dr Agrawal also highlighted the role of sleep hygiene, particularly limiting screen exposure before bedtime. “Staying away from screens at least 30 to 40 minutes before sleep is important. Bright, colourful visuals or loud sounds can trigger a cortisol surge at night, which further worsens sleep quality.”
Sleeping in late on weekends, she warned, can further disrupt hormonal balance. “When you sleep through the morning, a time when the body is meant to be active and alert, the hormonal cycle gets disturbed again. This throws off the circadian rhythm and, over time, harms health.”
While the effects may not be immediate, she cautioned against long-term patterns. “These changes are not acute, but chronically irregular sleep increases the risk of conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Together, these significantly raise the risk of heart disease.”
This story is done in collaboration with First Check, which is the health journalism vertical of DataLEADS.
