Tossing and turning all night is the worst, especially considering you know you will be dragging the next day. If you’ve ever experienced insomnia or stayed up way too late, you are familiar with the symptoms of sleep deprivation: crankiness, lethargy, and grogginess. When you are overtired, do you reach easily for sugary, fatty foods? Well, you are not alone. Studies have shown that lack of sleep, poor eating habits and weight problems all go hand in hand.
A study recently found that people who are sleepy by day are hungrier and more prone to eat high-calorie foods. Researchers took MRIs of their sleep-deprived subjects and found low activity in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain, where critical thinking and decision making occurs. They concluded that when people don’t get enough sleep, they have a much harder time resisting the wrong foods and sticking to healthier eating habits.
Lack of sleep is also shown to affect the hormones that control appetite and satiety: ghrelin, which signals when you are hungry, and leptin, which tells you when you are full. Studies have shown that people who are sleep-deprived have lower leptin and elevated ghrelin levels, setting the stage for overeating, especially sugary, refined carbohydrates.
The National Sleep Foundation found that 63 percent of American adults don’t get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night, consisting of about five ninety-minute sleep cycles, each with a deeply restful rapid-eye movement phase during which calories are burned. Disrupting or missing REM cycles can lead to unwanted weight gain, and losing sleep night after night is known to have a cumulative effect. One theory holds that lack of sleep is stressful, and chronic sleep deprivation, as a survival measure, stores calories rather than burning them off
The bottom line: get a better night’s sleep to help you reach your weight-loss goals.
- Eat a smaller, earlier dinner. Eating a heavy meal increases the flow of blood to the digestive tract, which puts the pancreas and intestinal muscles into overdrive. This means your body is revved up, when what it needs is to wind down for a restful sleep. Instead, have a light dinner early in the evening to ensure a deep sleep.
- Eat a balanced diet. Sleep quality can be affected by the nutritional gaps caused by skipping meals and eating too few calories during the day. Further, a deficiency in iron has been linked to restless leg syndrome, which surely will keep you up through the night. A lack of folic acid enhances sleeplessness. To avoid deficiencies that disrupt your sleep patterns, maintain a nutrient- and calorie-balanced diet, and choose foods known to calm, relax, and help promote better sleep, especially foods rich in B vitamins, zinc, and calcium.
- Go easy on caffeine, heat, and sodium. The caffeine in coffee and soft drinks remains in your system, an artificial stimulant for up to twelve hours. Swap coffee for water, decaffeinated coffee, and teas during your midday break. The blood pressure spike and dehydration potentially caused by salty foods can keep you restless at night. And spicy and fatty foods eaten close to bedtime may cause indigestion, which can definitely keep you up.