Does lack of sleep cause weight gain or loss?
Does lack of sleep cause weight gain or loss?
What role does sleep have in weight loss?
If you’re dieting, you might be curious in Does lack of sleep cause weight gain or loss?
Is there a link between sleep and weight loss? It’s a crucial question, especially if you’re trying to lose weight by dieting and exercising. Sleep is equally as important as moving and fuelling our bodies because it allows us to relax and recharge.
Professionals recommend that we receive 6-8 hours of sleep per night on average, but many of us aren’t getting anywhere near that amount due to hectic work, families, or even technology. When we don’t get enough sleep, it has an impact on our ability to operate and, as a result, our eating habits. But can we burn calories when sleeping, and how does a lack of sleep influence our appetite?
Read also: Regulate your brown fat for fast weight loss.
Sleep and weight loss relationship
We definitely burn calories when sleeping, believe it or not – but we all burn different amounts of calories, just as we do while we’re up. When sleeping, most individuals burn about 50 calories each hour, although the actual number depends on our specific basal metabolic rate (BMR), and the more sleep we receive, the more calories we burn. As a result, someone who only sleeps 5 hours per night on average is more likely to burn less calories than someone who sleeps 8 hours per night on a regular basis. This is why, if you don’t get enough sleep, learning how to sleep for extended periods of time might be beneficial.
And, as Flo Seabright, nutritionist and CEO of FBF Collective, told Live Science, a lack of sleep might influence our weight-loss efforts: “Lack of sleep may have an influence on food choices, whether it’s because sticking to a ‘typical’ healthy, balanced diet feels more difficult when you’re sleep deprived, or because we choose meals that we think would give us more energy, such sugary or sweet foods.”
“Quality sleep is vital in order to allow your body to work efficiently and is an important manner in which your body can recover and perform key biological functions, such as hormone control – particularly those hormones associated to hunger, appetite, and fullness,” Seabright added.
Hormones play a large role in controlling or boosting our appetites; for example, most of us feel hungrier than usual after drinking alcohol the night before, which is usually due to a lack of quality sleep and hormonal disruption.
According to a study published in PLoS Medicine, when the hunger hormones ghrelin and leptin are disrupted, it can affect our diets and how much we want food. When you have an empty stomach, Ghrelin, a hormone that helps to alert you when you’re hungry, is produced, whereas Leptin helps to suppress appetite and notifies the brain when we’re hungry.
Seabright, on the other hand, stated: “Our bodies need sleep to balance these hormones. Increased appetite and lower satiety can occur when the body is unable to control these adequately, making it more difficult to stick to a nutritionally optimum diet.”
Best time to sleep for weight loss
In fact, a study of over 1000 persons revealed that those who slept for shorter periods of time had higher (14.9 percent) ghrelin levels and lower (15.5 percent) leptin levels than those who got a decent night’s sleep. Participants who slept for fewer than eight hours each night had a higher BMI.
“When we don’t get enough sleep, the hunger hormone ghrelin and the satiety hormone leptin become unbalanced, resulting in greater sensations of hunger and lower satiety throughout the day,” Seabright added. “Not only do you feel hungry, but you’re less able to recognise when you’re full!”
Whether you choose to sleep in your favourite PJs or something a bit more loose, research has shown that sleeping nude offers several weight-loss benefits. Especially in the winter, you may want to bundle up in many layers.
How does bad sleep affect your metabolism?
Our body temperature affects not just the quality of our sleep, but also how our metabolism reacts, according to studies. The National Institutes of Health in the United States investigated a group of men for nearly a month in a colder atmosphere and discovered that it sped up their metabolism and burned brown fat to keep them warm as they slept.
Brown fat, also known as adipose tissue, helps you remain warm when you’re cold by becoming activated when your body temperature reaches a specific level, allowing it to be burned more quickly when you’re cold.