How Does Sleep Affect Your Weight?

Exercise and healthy eating habits are good steps toward losing weight, but for the most impressive results, the key is sleep. Getting a full night of sleep is fundamental to the body systems that help encourage the fat burning and muscle building involved in losing weight. Failing to do so, on the other hand, can lead to counteractive weight gain.

Sleep deprivation is a major reason people struggle to lose weight, and a problem too few are aware of. Read on to learn about the crucial connection between sleep and weight loss and get tips for how to sleep better.

The Connection Between Sleep and Weight Loss

Getting a full night of sleep, by itself, doesn’t actively do much to help you lose weight, though it is true that you burn calories in your sleep.  Instead, what sleep does is prevent problematic behaviors around food and exercise that lead to weight gain—just one of many benefits of sleep.

Appetite and Diet

When we suffer from a lack of sleep, our habits around food change in multiple ways. First, we lose the ability to control our appetite, meaning we are more likely to snack throughout the day.

Constant snacking is troublesome, considering that sleep deprivation also hinders the part of the brain responsible for making good decisions. So, when we snack, we are less scrutinizing when it comes to choosing between healthy and unhealthy options.

Combine all of this with the fact that sleep loss stimulates the reward center of the brain, which prioritizes fatty and sugary foods, and you can see a clear path to weight gain.

But that’s not all—to make matters worse, sleep deprivation triggers the body’s fight or flight reaction, pumping the body with the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol transforms sugar into fat and stores it for later use in everyone’s most stubborn problem area—the gut.

Exercise

To lose weight, you need plenty of energy to exercise and fuel your healthy body functions. When you are sleep deprived, your body struggles to produce energy and is forced to uses what little energy it does produce just to stay awake. As a result, you may feel less motivated to be active and perform the exercise required for weight loss.

The relationship between sleep and weight loss isn’t just a matter of motivation; it’s also about proper muscle function. When we lack sleep, we have a harder time building muscle and become more prone to muscle strains that leave us feeling sore. The result is a vicious cycle that makes demotivates us from working out, providing yet another reason for weight gain.

Five Tips for Getting Better Sleep

Concerned about the relationship between sleep and weight loss and curious about how to sleep better? Here are five tips for reaping the various benefits of sleep, including making better decisions about food and exercise.

1. Make your bedroom pitch dark

Sleeping in a dark bedroom helps stimulate the production of melatonin, a helpful hormone that facilitates sleep and weight loss.

2. Stay away from screens before bed

The blue light from screens interrupts our body’s circadian rhythm, increasing the risk of insomnia, another sleep-related reason for weight loss.

3. Don’t eat right before bed

Eating too close to bedtime can lead to problems like heartburn and night sweats, which may keep you up at night.

4. Keep the bedroom cool

Cool temperatures during sleep and weight loss are very closely tied, as cool temperatures activate healthy “brown fat,” which burns fuel, rather than storing it.

5. Invest in a good mattress

You should be sleeping on the most comfortable mattress that helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. Check out the reviews on our site to compare all the most comfortable mattress brands, such as Nectar, Puffy, and Lull.

Conclusion

Getting enough sleep is central to healthy living and plays a key role in losing weight. Put sleep first on your weight loss journey to see just how important getting good shut-eye can be!