The Importance of Sleep – How it Affects Weight Loss

The importance of sleep and how it affects weight loss has been debated for years. Some have said that there’s no concrete scientific basis for lack of sleep affecting weight in terms of either loss or gain. Yet others have said that sleep deprivation does indeed cause an imbalance in hunger hormones and a rise in cortisol (stress hormone) levels and thus lead to weight issues.

The latter is what leads me to believe that not getting enough sleep can indirectly lead to weight gain or prevent weight loss.

But, before we get into that, let’s look at the importance of sleep and some of the documented effects of sleep deprivation.

First of all, we’ve all heard that you should get 8 hours of sleep every night. In The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time by Arianna Huffington, she explains how 8 hours is the general number that’s been accepted by the medical community for ages. However, her research has shown that some people actually do okay with 7 hours. Others need 9 hours.

Personally, I can sleep 12-14 hours if I had nothing better to do and nobody bothers me. But 8 hours does leave me feeling refreshed. The National Sleep Foundation has recommended the following, which varies by age group:

• Birth to 3 months: 14 to 17 hours
• 4 to 11 months: 12 to 15 hours
• 1 to 2 years: 11 to 14 hours
• 3 to 5 years: 10 to 13 hours
• 6 to 13 years: 9 to 11 hours
• 14 to 17 years: 8 to 10 hours
• 18 to 64 years: 7 to 9 hours
• 65 years and older: 7 to 8 hours

Beyond just feeling refreshed, the importance of sleep should be seriously considered.

During the hours of your slumber, the body:

• Has the chance to make cellular repairs
• Lowers inflammation
• The brain stores new information and gets rid of toxic waste.
• Nerve cells communicate and reorganize, which supports healthy brain function.
• Restores energy
• Strengthens immune system
• Maintains a healthy blood pressure
• Decreases risk of chronic diseases
• Releases molecules like hormones and proteins.

And we don’t need science to tell us that without sleep, our minds don’t function nearly as well as when we have a full night’s sleep. But science has shown that our mood is affected negatively, as is our cognitive ability, memory, creativity, decision making, focus and concentration, and problem-solving skills.

So, let’s go back to sleep deprivation causing imbalanced hunger hormones and rising cortisol levels.

Hormones play a significant role in maintaining a healthy weight. In addition to imbalanced hunger hormones potentially causing you to feel hungry when you’re not, cortisol levels don’t help the situation at all. Given all of the things that our bodies do while we sleep, if our bodies are denied the time to do these things, it puts our bodies under stress. We need our bodies to make repairs, rebalance hormones, eliminate waste, etc. and you’re denying your body the opportunity to do so.

Think of your body like a machine, or your car. You wouldn’t drive it without ever putting gas, changing the oil and filters, or getting regular maintenance, would you? If you did, it wouldn’t take long for your car to break down. Stressful and damaging to your car and your body.

Cortisol is released whenever you’re under stress. Back in the day when humans needed that fight or flight signal, cortisol was useful. But today, we don’t need cortisol to tell us to run from a T-Rex or tigers. But cortisol didn’t go away. Instead, things like looming deadlines at work, a jerk of a boss…or lack of sleep…have become the modern-day T-Rex.

Some studies have shown that higher levels of cortisol have been linked to making people want to eat.

You’ve heard of people stress-eating? Maybe you’re one of them. The problem is, cortisol related hunger doesn’t make you want to eat healthy foods. Quite the opposite, in fact. It makes you crave high-carb, high-fat, and high-sugar foods. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that that is a formula that spells disaster for your weight loss goals.

In addition to these unfair cravings, cortisol has been shown to inhibit testosterone. Yes, women have testosterone too, just like men have the so-called female hormones. Both genders have both “female” and “male” hormones, just in different amounts. Naturally, men have much higher levels of testosterone, which allows them to build much larger muscle mass than women. But while testosterone in women also allows us to build muscle, albeit to a lesser degree, it also helps to boost our metabolism.

Well, if cortisol inhibits testosterone, which in turn inhibits our metabolism, which helps us to burn fat…that sucks!

If our metabolism isn’t burning at peak capacity, our ability to burn fat grinds to a screeching halt. Again, it doesn’t take a genius, right?

To me, that answer is simple. Get as close to 8 hours of sleep as I can.

You want your weight loss goals to run as smoothly as possible. You already know that it’s going to be a challenge. Why would you want to make the hill you’re climbing even steeper than before?

Stack the odds in your favor. Sleep is a relatively easy one to address.