“Sleeping in on weekends is bad for your health.”
Sleeping in on weekends has not been shown to harm health; big weekend shifts in sleep timing are only weakly linked with slightly higher body weight.
Sleeping in on weekends is not something to worry about, and if you are short on sleep it helps you recover some of it. The better long-term fix is getting enough sleep during the week, so you need less catching up.
Compare your weekday and weekend wake times. If the gap is big, move your weekday bedtime a little earlier rather than cutting your weekend sleep.
Safety note: Do not shorten needed recovery sleep solely to keep a precise wake time. Severe schedule disruption can increase drowsy-driving and workplace risk.
Talk to a healthcare professional if: you are often sleepy during the week even after sleeping in on weekends, or shift work makes it hard to get enough sleep.
Studies link big weekend shifts in sleep timing with slightly higher body weight, but extra weekend sleep has been linked with better, not worse, outcomes in people short on sleep. Confidence is limited because nearly all of this evidence comes from observational studies.
Sleeping in on weekends has not been shown to harm health; big weekend shifts in sleep timing are only weakly linked with slightly higher body weight. In a Swedish study of about 44,000 adults under 65, people who slept short on weekdays but long on weekends had no higher death rate than steady 6-to-7-hour sleepers, while sleeping 5 hours or less every night was linked with a 65 percent higher rate.
A review of 43 studies with about 230,000 people found that social jetlag (the gap between sleep timing on workdays and days off) was linked with higher body mass index, but the link was weak, and studies like these cannot show cause. A review of 41 studies found that weekend catch-up sleep was associated with better health outcomes, and in a UK study of about 84,000 adults 50 and older, 1 to 1.5 hours of extra weekend sleep was linked with lower dementia risk. A lab trial found that weekend catch-up sleep did not prevent the metabolic effects of short weekday nights, which points to the short weeknights as the main problem.
- Chaput JP, Dutil C, Featherstone R, Ross R, Giangregorio L, Saunders TJ, et al. Sleep timing, sleep consistency, and health in adults: a systematic review. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 2020;45(10 Suppl 2):S232-S247. DOI: 10.1139/apnm-2020-0032. PMID: 33054339
- Arab A, Karimi E, Garaulet M, Scheer FAJL. Social jetlag and obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Obesity Reviews. 2024;25(3):e13664. DOI: 10.1111/obr.13664. PMID: 38072635. PMCID: PMC12510443
- Åkerstedt T, Ghilotti F, Grotta A, Zhao H, Adami HO, Trolle-Lagerros Y, Bellocco R. Sleep duration and mortality: Does weekend sleep matter? Journal of Sleep Research. 2019;28(1):e12712. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12712. PMID: 29790200. PMCID: PMC7003477
- Chen H, Shen T, Zhao M, Tong L, Lu G, Yang W, et al. Accelerometer-measured weekend catch-up sleep and incident dementia: A prospective cohort study. Alzheimer's & Dementia. 2025;21(12):e71001. DOI: 10.1002/alz.71001. PMID: 41416569. PMCID: PMC12715702
- Depner CM, Melanson EL, Eckel RH, Snell-Bergeon JK, Perreault L, Bergman BC, et al. Ad libitum Weekend Recovery Sleep Fails to Prevent Metabolic Dysregulation during a Repeating Pattern of Insufficient Sleep and Weekend Recovery Sleep. Current Biology. 2019;29(6):957-967.e4. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.069. PMID: 30827911