Sleep your way to weight loss
Can you lose weight sleeping? Strange as it may seem, if you are sleeping 6 hours or less each night, increasing your hours of sleep can help your weight loss efforts and improve your overall health.
This doesn’t mean you will wake up thinner simply by going to bed earlier, but you may find that a little extra sleep will help stop weight gain and improve your results when you start a weight loss program.
There are several processes at work when it comes to your weight and the relationship with sleep. The first is simply behavioral. When you sleep you don’t eat and if you are very tired, your food choices are less likely to be healthy ones.
When you are sleeping you have no difficulty going for several hours without getting hungry. Some people have trouble making themselves eat a good breakfast even though it has been over 12 hours since they last ate. Try not eating for 12 hours while you are awake and it quickly becomes clear that sleep suppresses your appetite.
Most theories for this appetite suppression center around the hormone cortisol and its affect on stimulating hunger. Cortisol is released in response to certain stimulation such as light and stress. There is a normal cycle for cortisol levels which gives you higher levels when you are awake and slowly decreasing levels through the afternoon and evening so that you reach your lowest levels while sleeping.
Cortisol is responsible for regulating energy use in your body and works on controlling your blood sugar levels to give you energy when you need it. Cortisol also works on fat storage so that you have an energy store for the future.
Because cortisol levels are stimulated by light and stress, artificial light sources such as lamps, computer screens, television as well as stressful situations such as work or domestic problems can increase your cortisol levels (and appetite) at times when they should be low. These fluctuations in cortisol levels appear to work against your weight loss goals.
How much sleep you need varies according to your age. Younger people tend to need more sleep than adults. Studies indicate that the right amount of sleep for most adults falls between 6.5 and 7.5 hours per night. It has even been found that adults sleeping longer than 8.5 hours may not live as long as people who sleep within the 6.5 to 7.5 hour range.