Can failure to capture Zzzs really undermine your weight loss efforts? The short answer: yes. The National Sleep Foundation recommends sleeping seven to nine hours a night, and extensive research suggests that if you spare that amount, you can become a victim of an expanding waist.
A study by the European Endocrinology Society revealed that losing sleep impairs your hormonal balance, giving hormones that promote satiety, such as GLP-1, red light, while hormones that promote hunger such as ghrelin become green. In turn, tired people are more likely to choose caloric pumps for lunch, experience more pleasure derived from food and remain more sedentary than their well-rested counterparts. In addition, a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people deprived of sleep consumed approximately 385 more calories per day. (To put this into perspective, eating 385 additional calories can result in earning more than one pound in just 10 days!)
“The main cause of obesity is an imbalance between intake and calorie expenditure and this study adds to the accumulation of evidence that lack of sleep could contribute to this imbalance. Therefore, there may be some truth in the saying ‘early to bed, early upon rising, makes a healthy and wise man’, “said Dr. Gerda Pot, lead author of the Division of Diabetes and Nutrition Sciences at King’s College London and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
In simple terms, you are likely to be too tired to choose the salad instead of the sub salami. But if your busy schedule does not allow you to go to the hay as long as you want (sorry for you, soccer moms and CEOs!), There is a simple solution.
A 2017 South Korean study published in Sleep magazine found that sleeping on weekends is related to lower body weight. “Short sleep, which usually causes sleep debts, is common and inevitable in many cases, and is a risk factor for obesity, hypertension, coronary heart disease and mortality,” said lead study author Dr. Chang-Ho Yun, from Budang Hospital of Seoul National University, told Reuters Health. Do you know what else can help you stop counting sheep? These 8 expert tricks to fall asleep quickly.
