5 ways sleep affects your weight
Quality rest can support weight management in several ways — here’s the science on sleeping and the scale.
We all know sleeping feels good — and it turns out that sleep supports healthy weight management, in the short term and over time. “Sleep ranks right up there with healthy eating and exercise when it comes to [attaining] healthy-weight goals,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Ph.D., director of the Sleep Center of Excellence at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
Does this mean you can lose weight simply by sleeping more? Not quite — read on for a nuanced look at how sleep can affect your weight.
1. Not sleeping enough can make you hungrier
“Reduced sleep dysregulates appetite hormones,” says Abhinav Singh, M.D., medical director of Indiana Sleep Center. Sleep deprivation is associated with increased levels of ghrelin, a hormone that helps signal hunger, as well as reduced levels of the hormone leptin, which is linked to feelings of satiety, Singh says — and these hormonal effects tend to kick in when you get less than seven hours of sleep.
2. Lack of sleep may affect cravings
“Sleep loss increases activity in brain areas associated with reward. These signals seem to increase motivation to seek foods that are high in [unhealthy] fat and calories,” St-Onge says. Quality of sleep matters, too: people who reported sleeping poorly tended to consume more added sugars than those who snoozed more soundly.
3. Sleeping well can help you work out
Exercising takes mental and physical oomph — and being well-rested is key to both. By getting enough sleep, you’re safeguarding your energy levels so you can exercise the next day, and that exercise leads to better sleep, so you can continue the positive cycle.
4. Poor sleep can scramble your plans
Executive functioning is what helps us organize our time and tasks, solve problems, and manage impulses — and poor sleep can hamper it. That means making healthy choices like meal planning, reaching for fruit instead of a candy bar, or getting to the gym challenging to follow, Singh says.
5. Not getting enough sleep may ding your metabolism
REM sleep (when you dream) stretches may lead to a higher resting metabolic rate — the energy a body needs for basic functioning. If your sleep is cut short, you lose out on extended REM stretches, which “could make weight loss or maintenance harder,” says St-Onge. And consistently getting short sleep is linked to decreased insulin sensitivity and increased cortisol, which could raise a person’s risk of developing prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.