How Sleep Affects Hunger
Sleep is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle, especially when you’re trying to lose weight. A good night’s sleep repairs cellular damage, improves mental focus, boosts immunity and helps facilitate weight loss. Together with diet and exercise, sleep provides the foundation of your long-term health and wellness—it can prevent heart disease, promote healing and prevent excess weight gain. Every good weight loss specialist will tell you that sleep is critical to achieving long-term results.
Just like diet affects quality of sleep, how much you sleep impacts your diet.
Sleep-Deprivation Stimulates Appetite
When you’re not getting adequate sleep, you’re more likely to overeat and snack. This is because sleep affects two critical hormones that regulate hunger: ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin, which is produced by cells within the digestive tract, signals the brain that you’re hungry, increases consumption and promotes fat storage. Leptin, often referred to as the “satiety hormone,” inhibits hunger by signaling feelings of fullness and helps regulate energy balance. While sleeping, your ghrelin levels are low and leptin levels are high. Sleep deprivation causes these hormone levels to move in the opposite direction.
You Crave Fattening, Unhealthy Foods
Studies show that when gherlin levels are high and leptin levels are low, we crave high-calorie foods with too much sugar, simple carbs and unhealthy fats. On top of that, when you’re tired, it’s more difficult to resist unhealthy foods—your mind is less likely to register the consequences of these foods on your diet. Sleep-deprived people are also more likely to eat junk food and consume a greater number of calories after 8 pm.
Why do you snack so much at night? People commonly complain about having less control over hunger and cravings at night. Our hunger increases at night due to our natural biorhythm, which is called our circadian rhythm. The mechanism thru which this happens is not well known. The fatigued brain has less resistance against cravings and hunger. This is why staying up late leads to more snacking. This is also why being sleep deprived leads to the same.
Metabolic Slowdown
Lack of sleep also causes a spike in cortisol, the hormone that stimulates insulin release and the metabolism of fat and carbs. When its secretion is disrupted, this signals your body to store energy and fat, essentially slowing down your metabolism. You’ll burn less calories and your blood sugar levels will go awry, which wreaks havoc on hunger. Studies show that cortisol also causes fat to store centrally around the organs—specifically the abdomen—resulting in stubborn belly fat.
The bottom line—lack of sleep negatively impacts weight loss and can even cause weight gain. To manage hunger and prevent unhealthy eating, strive to set a consistent, healthy bedtime schedule. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average adult needs to sleep between seven and nine hours per night. Talk to your weight loss specialist to help determine how much sleep your system needs. Then plan to go to bed and wake up at the same time every night with a goal of getting adequate, quality sleep.
