When people talk about losing weight, it’s mainly about types of foods as well as exercises to include in their lives.
Sleep is hardly a subject connected to weight loss. In fact, if anything, the general conception is, we should be sleeping less if we want to lose weight. Did you know though that countless people who don’t get enough sleep are also overweight?
Insufficient sleep: A risk factor for weight gain and obesity
Although it may seem unrealistic to link insufficient sleep to weight gain, but it has, through studies, been revealed to be true. In fact, poor quality sleep too may be the culprit for a person to end up with a higher body mass index (BMI), and put on more weight than they ought to.
While not everyone needs the same amount of sleep to be healthy, people need at an average of at least seven hours of restful, good quality sleep at night to be at their best, which also includes their ideal weight.
Anything less than what their body needs may result in weight gain and increased body mass index. Studies have also concluded that shortened sleep durations in a continuous manner increased the likelihood of obesity not only in adults, but also in children.
There was one long term study that observed about 60,000 non-obese nurses for 16 years. At the end of the study, the nurses who slept five or fewer hours per night were 15% more likely to end up obese than those who slept at least seven hours a night!
Other than these kind of observational studies, there have been experimental sleep deprivation studies conducted too, by experts, to determine the link between weight gain and lack of sleep.
One study allowed 16 adults just five hours of sleep per night for five nights. They gained an average of 820g over the short course of the experiment.
With poor sleep quality comes increased appetite
A weary, tired body has an impact on two important hunger hormones, ghrelin and leptin. What’s worse, unhealthy, tired bodies crave unhealthy foods, so that too is bad news.
Ghrelin is a hormone released in the stomach that signals hunger in the brain. Levels are high before you eat, which is when the stomach is empty, and this level goes down after a meal.
A vicious cycle
Many sleep disorders, like sleep apnea, are found to be worsened by weight gain. In cases such as these, it’s a vicious cycle that can be difficult to overcome, especially if poor sleep can cause weight gain, which can further decrease sleep quality.
Leptin is a hormone released from fat cells. It suppresses hunger and signals fullness in the brain. When you do not get adequate sleep, the body makes more ghrelin and less leptin, leaving you hungry and increasing your appetite. One compelling study of over 1,000 people found that those who slept for short durations had higher ghrelin levels and lower leptin levels than those who got adequate sleep. That’s not all though, for the ones who went without adequate sleep also had higher BMIs compared to those who slept well.
Fact: Stress makes some people hungrier than usual
This is due to the levels of the hormone cortisol being higher when one does not get enough sleep. Cortisol is a stress hormone that has been known to cause increased appetite in people.
Less sleep may equal to more calorie intake
While this increase in calories may be due to increased appetite and poor food choices, as mentioned earlier, it may however also be the result of more time being spent awake, being available to eat. This is an actual fact in this era, where many people spend their time awake being inactive and sedentary either in front of the computer or television set.
Poor sleep can also affect your ability to control your portion sizes, which includes indulging in snacks in between meals and having large portions of desserts like cake, pudding, ice cream, etc.
One compelling study saw participants being allowed to either sleep for eight hours, or keep awake all night. In the morning, they completed a computer-based task where they had to select portion sizes of different foods. The ones who stayed awake all night selected bigger portion sizes. They were found to have increased hunger and had higher levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin.
Better sleep may lead to better resting metabolism rate (RMR)
Your resting metabolism rate means the number of calories your body burns while you are completely at rest. This rate is however, affected by one’s age, sex, weight, body mass and even one’s height. That aside though, research indicates that sleep deprivation may lower your RMR. In one study, 15 men were kept awake for 24 hours. Afterward, their RMR was found to be lower than after a normal night’s rest, and their metabolic rate after eating was lower too.
It also seems that poor sleep can cause muscle loss. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does, so when muscle is lost, resting metabolic rates decrease. One study put 10 overweight adults on a 14-day diet of moderate calorie restriction.
Participants were allowed either 8.5 or 5.5 hours to sleep. Both groups lost weight from both fat and muscle, but the ones who were given only 5.5 hours to sleep lost less weight from fat and more from muscle.
Lack of sleep may interfere with insulin function
Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar from the bloodstream into your body’s cells to be used as energy. Poor sleep quality interferes with this function, making cells insulin resistant. When cells become insulin resistant, more sugar remains in the bloodstream and the body produces more insulin to compensate.
The excess insulin makes you hungrier and tells the body to store more calories as fat. Insulin resistance is also a precursor for type 2 diabetes.
In a study where a few men were allowed only four hours of sleep for six nights, the results showed that their bodies’ ability to lower blood sugar levels decreased by 40%. This suggests that even just a few nights of poor sleep can cause cells to become insulin resistant, which is a precursor to weight gain too.
Sleep well and all’s well.
Along with eating right and exercising, getting quality sleep is an important part of weight maintenance. Poor sleep can and will alter the way the body responds to food. Your appetite may increase, making you less likely to resist temptations and control portions.
To make matters worse, it can become a vicious cycle. The less you sleep, the more weight you gain, and the more weight you gain, the harder it is to sleep.
4 reasons why adequate sleep helps you make better food choices
- Lack of sleep has been found to alter brain activity, making it harder to make proper food choices. Even resisting unhealthy foods may become futile.
- Sleep deprivation will actually dull activity in the frontal lobe of the brain, which is the part of your brain that is in charge of decision-making and self-control.
- The reward centers of the brain are more stimulated by food when you are sleep deprived. This is probably why after a night of poor sleep, not only does that bowl of ice cream seem more attractive and tempting, but you’ll likely also have a harder time practicing self-control.
- Research has found that lack of sleep can increase your affinity for foods that are high in calories, processed carbohydrates and unhealthy fat.
It’s a health decision, and an important one too.
While there’s no hard number that applies to all people, a good rule of thumb is to receive between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, and to make sure that one poor night of sleep isn’t followed up with a few more. It might not seem like much, but it could make all the difference and mean more than any other health decision you make.
Don’t be fooled
It’s easy to judge an overweight person by assuming that he or she is probably eating more and moving less. There may be so much more than meets the eye. Being overweight may not even mean that you are sleeping a lot. In fact, almost half of the world’s population do not get enough proper sleep, even the obese ones!
