How Sleep Affects Your Weight

… and how you can make positive changes in your sleep hygiene

Inadequate sleep

can increase the chance of making a poor food choice.

Aside from how sleep affects your bodily functions, sleep can also affect your choices in consumption, which can be detrimental to your weight loss. Lacking sleep makes it harder to make good decisions, and causes your brain to look for comforts like unhealthy foods, as the reward centers feel starved.  Waking up and not being rested may push you to have a lot of coffee or an energy drink to wake up. While coffee itself isn't bad, most of us will add creamers and sweeteners which can be unhealthy, and lacking sleep may make you drink more coffee, increasing your intake of the unhealthy additives. You may also feel unmotivated to workout because of your tiredness, swap cooking dinner for takeout, and spend more time sedentary in the day. All of these choices made throughout the day can have a negative impact on progress and forward momentum. 

Sleep deprivation

may diminish your motivation to be active and adversely affect the regulation of important hormones.

Your body regulates ghrelin and leptin hormones, which tell you when to eat. Ghrelin promotes hunger, and Leptin helps you feel full. Studies have shown that when someone gets less than adequate amounts of sleep, ghrelin is increased and leptin is decreased, promoting hunger and diminishing the feeling of being full.

Sleep deprivation can lead to metabolic dysregulation, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Metabolic dysregulation has symptoms of increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol levels, all of which carry other harmful bodily malfunctions. 

Spending more time awake increases the opportunity to eat, another route for you to overconsume. 

How you can improve your sleep

Create a bedtime routine

and start the process with plenty of time to wind down. This will send the signal to your body that it’s time to sleep.

• Keeping a regular sleep schedule

  • This can help regulate your metabolic functions as well as make it easier for you to stay rested.

• Turn off all the lights

  • Leaving a light or TV on when you go to sleep can lead to less restful sleep, making those 8 hours worth a lot less in the long run.

• Don’t eat before bed. 

  • Eating before bed can make it harder to fall asleep.   And your activity slows while you rest, so you burn off less of the food than you would if you were awake after eating.

• Reduce stress

  • Stress can lead to lack of sleep. Meditating, therapy, or other options may help reduce your stress.