Your Sleep Loss: Understand Its Weight Gain Impact

How Sleep Loss Affects Weight 0:00

Did you know that the way you sleep can affect your weight? Well, I'm going to show you exactly how losing sleep can make you gain weight. First off, if you are not sleeping well, regardless of the cause, your appetite will be increased. This is because the hormone ghrelin which comes from your stomach causes you to feel more hungry. In addition, the hormone leptin which causes you to feel full is lower. So this is a double whammy that will cause you to eat more food. Next, if you aren't getting enough sleep or your sleep is interrupted due to untreated sleep apnea, you have more eating opportunity simply because you're awake longer.

Now, sleep deprivation or sleep interruption is also associated with impulsivity and a strong preference for high carbohydrate or processed snack foods. Taken together, these two factors cause increased calorie consumption. You are eating more and you're vulnerable to food choices that are more unhealthy. Now, insufficient sleep also correlates with more sedentary behavior. When you don't sleep well, you are much less likely to work out. You have less motivation, and your mood tends to be negative.

You often have irritability or anxiety and even depression. Sleep loss causes a drop in your core body temperature, and keeping your body temperature up is a major way that you burn calories. Sleep loss changes the way you process glucose or blood sugar. And cortisol, which is a stress hormone, is also increased. Finally, thyroid hormones can be dysregulated with sleep loss. These two factors create a situation where you have less energy expenditure, increased stress and also decision fatigue as you're trying to make choices about what to eat and how to get motivated to exercise.

Now the combination of increased calorie intake and reduced energy expenditure with stress hormones and unhealthy food choices leads to weight gain. And this is the way that sleep loss or sleep disruption, either due to untreated sleep apnea or even other causes, leads to weight gain.