Reasons Why No Sleep = No Weight Loss
Sleep and weight loss go together like peanut butter and jelly.
You have the best diet and workout routine on the planet, but if youre not getting enough quality sleep then youre not going to lose weight.
Todays culture looks at sleep as unimportant and the common quote youll hear often is Ill sleep when Im dead.
Its no wonder so many people today are overweight, exhausted and have a multitude of chronic diseases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of three people are sleep deprived. And the statistic for obesity is nearly identical with people getting six or fewer hours of sleep per night.
Getting enough high-quality sleep is so important to not only losing weight but for many other health factors.
Sleep impacts your immune system, your hormones, your metabolism, your energy levels and even how well your brain functions.
If youre not getting the sleep you find yourself hungrier throughout the day with less self-control. Its like fighting an uphill battle against weight gain.
The less sleep you get it becomes more tempting to skip workouts and eat more junk food.
A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found women who are sleep deprived were a third more likely to gain 33 pounds over a 16 year period.
Im sure you agree getting enough quality sleep is hard. Yet its incredibly important for weight loss.
The Sleep/weight Loss Connection
Many of us have been hearing the weight loss hormone story for a while. If you are sleep deprived:
But here’s a critical piece of the sleep/weight loss connection that we are just really beginning to understand:
Sometimes you can burn more calories when you are asleep than when you are just lying in bed.
And it all has to do with our stages of sleep, specifically REM sleep.
During REM sleep your brain is more active than any other stage. In fact in some cases it is MORE active than when you are awake. This activity requires fuel for thought called glucose – the basic building block of most foods.
Sleep follows a very particular, and fairly predictable, cycle in most individuals each night:
Your brain goes from: Wake to Stage 1, from Stage 1 to Stage 2, from Stage 2 to Stages 3 and 4, back to Stage 2 and on into REM sleep. You can see this in the graph above. But look at the yellow bar. This represents REM sleep, and notice how it gets longer and longer as the night progresses! This shows how your body gets more REM sleep in the very early morning hours. Just like riding a bike up hill, you have to climb up before you can coast down that hill, and you need to go through the first few sleep cycles to get more REM sleep.
Understanding The Reasons For Weight Gain
The study participants did not identify the specific factors that contribute to weight gain in women who had less sleep.
“We don’t have an answer from this study about why reduced sleep causes weight gain, but there are some possibilities that deserve further study,” Patel says. “Sleeping less may affect changes in a person’s basal metabolic rate . Another contributor to weight regulation that has recently been discovered is called non-exercise associated thermogenesis It may be that if you sleep less, you move around less, too, and therefore burn up fewer calories.”
Another important factor to consider is the impact of sleep on cortisol levels. Insufficient sleep can cause the release of additional cortisolthe stress hormoneand can stimulate hunger.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average woman gets only six and a half hours of sleep per night. Chronic sleep deprivation can have a variety of effects on metabolism and overall health.
Inadequate sleep:
- Interferes with the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and causes high blood levels of glucose, which leads to higher insulin levels and greater body-fat storage.
- Drives down leptin levels, which causes the body to crave carbohydrates.
- Reduces levels of growth hormone–a protein that helps regulate the body’s proportions of fat and muscle.
- Can lead to insulin resistance and contribute to increased risk of diabetes
- Can increase blood pressure
- Can increase the risk of heart disease
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Banish Electronics From The Bedroom
To lose weight overnight, all blue light devices laptop, tablet and/or smartphone need to go. Studies have shown that nighttime exposure to the blue light they all emit disrupts the production of the melatonin the body needs to promote sleep. In addition, a study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University reported that blue light exposure at night increases hunger and insulin resistance, which can, of course, lead to weight gain and not just the disruption of the body’s fat-burning power.
Does Weight Loss Method Matter In Osa
With several options for losing weight, many OSA patients want to know which one is best for sleep apnea. Some of the best weight loss methods include:
- Dietary changes
- Medications
- Surgery
Doctors usually prescribe dietary and exercise interventions as a first-line treatment for obesity. Obese patients who are unlikely or unable to achieve adequate weight loss through behavior modifications may consider pharmacological or surgical interventions. There is evidence that behavioral modification is just as effective as certain weight-loss surgeries in improving OSA. Encouragingly, exercise alone can modestly improve the severity of OSA, even without significant weight loss.
Regardless of technique, OSA improvement is proportional to the amount of weight lost. Therefore, patients should discuss with their doctor which weight loss strategy is best-suited to their personal circumstances, overall health, and their OSA severity.
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Eat Whole Grains At Lunch
You know to avoid big meals, coffee, colas, and alcohol before bed, but did you know that it’s best to eat your complex carbohydrates at lunchtime, not with dinner? “Serotonin converts to melatonin in your stage 3 REM sleep, and serotonin is sourced from whole-grain complex carbohydrates. So you don’t need to have carbs before bed to sleep, just have them at some point through the day,” says Cat Smiley, owner of Whistler Fitness Vacations, a weight-loss retreat for women.
Also, to meet your daily fiber goal, “about 20 grams of insoluble fiber is important to enable you to sleep, so aim to eat that daily, and you’ll ensure you can convert enough serotonin to sleep well.”
Creating Healthy Habits To Lose Weight
If a person wishes to maintain a moderate weight, they need to eat and sleep well.
However, changing routines and building healthier habits can be challenging, and often people stick with some changes more than others.
Below are some ideas individuals can use to start making healthier lifestyle choices and habits.
Create a contract: Writing a weight loss goal down in the form of a contract can help a person understand why they wish to lose weight. For example, they may have a family history of heart disease. The contract can also include details on how they will lose weight, such as running twice a week or batch cooking nutritious meals at the weekend.
Keep a food diary: Tracking meals throughout the day will help a person better understand what they are eating, so they can make mindful choices, such as choosing frozen yogurt over ice cream.
Monitor progress: An individual can track their progress and health-related milestones. This does not have to be only weight-related and could also include achievements, such as running for 2 miles without feeling breathless.
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How Does Sleep Affect Weight Loss
If youre dieting you may want to know – how does sleep affect weight loss?
Does sleep affect weight loss? It’s an important question, especially If you are dieting and exercising in a bid to shed some pounds. Good sleep is just as vital as moving and fueling our bodies, as it gives us time to rest and reset.
Professionals say that we should be getting on average 6-8 hours of sleep a night, but for many of us, stressful jobs, families or even technology means were not getting anything like that amount of sleep each night. When we dont get enough sleep it affects how we function and ultimately our eating habits. But can we lose calories as we sleep and how does lack of snoozing ultimately affect our appetite?
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Potential Benefits For Your Metabolism
Getting enough sleep may help you avoid decreases in metabolism that can happen when you havent gotten enough sleep.
Your resting metabolic rate is the number of calories your body burns when at rest. Its affected by many factors, such as:
- age
Therefore, more research is needed to determine whether and how sleep loss affects metabolism.
Lack of sleep may also suppress fat oxidation, which is the breakdown of fat cells into energy.
One study found that sleep deprivation resulted in significantly lower basal fat oxidation in people of different ages, sexes, and body composition. However, RMR was not affected .
It also seems that poor quality sleep may decrease muscle synthesis, which may lower RMR.
One small study showed muscle synthesis decreased significantly by 18% and plasma testosterone by 24% after one night of poor sleep. Additionally, cortisol significantly increased by 21%. Collectively, these conditions contribute to the breakdown of muscle .
However, this study was small and only 1 day long, which are major limitations. Furthermore, other studies suggest that sleep deprivation doesnt affect muscle repair and growth. Thus, longer and larger studies are needed (
It may also increase your risk of injury and delay recovery.
Ultimately, getting enough sleep is key to staying active.
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Why You Lose Weight Overnight
While you sleep, your bodys metabolism rate drops about 15%. That means many of your bodys processes that consume energy slows down. While that should technically work against weight loss at night, you might still observe yourself lighter in the morning than the night before.
Here are a few things that cause you to lose weight overnight:
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Dehydration saps your mood and energy, making your feel tired and more prone to reach for comfort foods for a pick-me-up, says Ansel. What’s more, downing a couple of glasses before a meal has been shown to help people eat less. Aim to drink at least 72 ounces of water every day, and another eight ounces for every 30 minutes you workout, she says.
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Why Do I Lose Weight When I Sleep
The main thing affecting overnight weight change is the amount of water in your system. Water weighs an amazing amount. A gallon of water, for example, weighs 8 pounds and a pint weighs 1 pound. In other words, if you drink a 1-liter bottle of soda, instantly you will gain 2.2 pounds, just from the water.
Overnight, two processes cause you to lose water gradually: breathing and sweating. In respiration, each time you exhale, you lose a small amount of water. If you exhale onto a cool piece of glass you will see this moisture. Through sweating, also called transpiration, you lose water through the skin. Over the course of one night, both of these processes eliminate more water than you might think.
Also contributing to the weight loss is the tradition of using the toilet prior to the morning weigh-in. That process alone can eliminate up to a pound of water.
The average person eliminates about 1.2 liters of water just in urine every day. Another liter a day is eliminated through perspiration and respiration. That’s 2.2 kilograms throughout the day.
Does Sleep Affect Weight Loss: Lack Of Sleep And Appetite
Hormones play a big part in regulating or increasing our appetites – for instance most of us feel hungrier than normal when we’ve drunk alcohol the night before, normally because weve had less quality sleep and our hormones have been disrupted.
PLos Med research shows that when ghrelin and leptin, the two hunger hormones, are impacted, with disruption to sleep, it can change our diets or how much we crave food. Ghrelin, a hormone which helps to tell you you’re hungry, is released when you have an empty stomach, while Leptin helps to suppress hunger and informs the brain when were hungry.
However, Seabright said: “Sleep is key for our body to regulate these hormones. When the body is not able to regulate these properly, the result can be increased hunger levels and reduced satiety, which make it more difficult to adhere to a nutritionally optimal diet.”
In fact the research around these two hormones, with over 1000 people, found that participants who slept for shorter periods, than those who had a good night’s sleep, had higher ghrelin levels and lower leptin levels. While BMI levels were also higher in the participants who slept for less hours each night.
“When we dont get enough sleep, ghrelin, the ‘hunger hormone, and leptin, the ‘satiety hormone, can become imbalanced leading to increased feelings of hunger and reduced satiety throughout the day,” Seabright explained, “Not only do you feel hungrier, but you are less able to recognise when you are full!”
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Poor Sleep Changes Your Fat Cells
Think about the last time you had a bad night of sleep. How did you feel when you woke up? Exhausted. Dazed. Confused. Maybe even a little grumpy? It’s not just your brain and body that feel that wayyour fat cells do, too. When your body is sleep-deprived, it suffers from “metabolic grogginess.” The term was coined by University of Chicago researchers who analyzed what happened after just four days of poor sleepsomething that commonly happens during a busy week. One late night at work leads to two late nights at home, and next thing you know, you’re in sleep debt.
But it’s just four nights, so how bad could it be? You might be able to cope just fine. After all, coffee does wonders. But the hormones that control your fat cells don’t feel the same way.
Within just four days of sleep deprivation, your body’s ability to properly use insulin becomes completely disrupted. In fact, the University of Chicago researchers found that insulin sensitivity dropped by more than 30 percent.
Here’s why that’s bad: When your insulin is functioning well, fat cells remove fatty acids and lipids from your bloodstream and prevent storage. When you become more insulin-resistant, fats circulate in your blood and pump out more insulin. Eventually, this excess insulin ends up storing fat in all the wrong places, such as tissues like your liver. And this is exactly how you become fat and suffer from diseases like diabetes.
Don’t Drink Before Bed
Bogan suggested limiting your intake of alcohol and other substances as they can cause sleep disruption . An evening cocktail may sound like it would be super relaxing, but even one alcoholic drink too close to bedtime can impede the body’s ability to burn calories. This is because instead of focusing on burning fat as it should, the body is busy trying to metabolize the alcohol instead. So while a glass of wine with dinner is OK, leave it at that.
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/7lifts Weight Late At Night
Lifting weight can boost your metabolism for up to 16 hours. The findings of the study are published in a paper titled “The effect of morning vs evening exercise training on glycaemic control and serum metabolites in overweight/obese men: a randomised trial”. Low nocturnal glucose levels were observed in participants who trained in the evening.
Weight Loss Action Point
If you want to lose weight, you should make sure that you are getting sufficient sleep in addition to following a healthy diet and exercise program. For most of us, that means, you’ll need 7 hours or more a night.
- American Thoracic Society, International Conference, News release, San Diego, May 19-24, 2006.
- Patel SR, Malhotra A, White DP, Gottlieb DJ, Hu FB. Association between reduced sleep and weight gain in women. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Nov 15 164:947-54. Shomon, Mary. The Thyroid Diet: Manage Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss, HarperCollins. 2004.
- Spiegel K, Leproult R, Van Cauter E. “Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function.” Lancet. 1999 354:1435-1439.
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Sleep Apnea And Cardiovascular Health
Sleep apnea affects a persons entire cardiovascular system in several ways. Each time a breathing lapse occurs, the bodys oxygen supply drops, triggering a fight or flight response. When this response occurs, blood pressure surges and heart rate increases, causing the sleeper to awaken and reopen their airway. This cycle repeats throughout the night. The cyclic rising and falling blood oxygen levels can cause inflammation, which in turn may lead to atherosclerosis which is associated with heart attacks, stroke, and high blood pressure.
Sleep apnea also elevates carbon dioxide and glucose levels in the blood, disrupts the part of the nervous system that controls heartbeat and blood flow, increases insulin resistance, and alters the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide. As a result, sleep apnea is associated with the following heart, lung, and metabolic problems, among others:
- Hypertension
- Atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias
- Heart failure
- Stroke and transient ischemic attacks
- Coronary heart disease
- Metabolic syndrome
