Have you observed that it’s difficult to avoid junk food when you're exhausted? It's also how it's much easier to make healthy decisions about your food when you're refreshed? There’s science behind it!
If you're feeling energetic after restful sleep at night, you're more likely to make smarter, healthier food choices. Sleep affects your body's muscles and fat levels. Chronic inflammation, insulin resistance, and obesity decrease when you get more sleep.
Sleep, Muscle, And Body Fat Are Linked
Not getting enough sleep could decrease the body's muscular weight and may cause you to gain excess visceral fat around the middle. In the course of sleep, especially REM, your body repairs and strengthens muscles while breaking down fat to generate energy. If you don't get enough rest, you won't be able to build up muscles or burn off fat.
If you're not sleeping it is also more likely to eat in the late hours of the night, compounding the problem and resulting in the intake of more empty calories, and less opportunity for the body's reserves of fats to be utilized.
A study carried out at the University of Chicago compared the body fat percentage and sleeping hours within the same sample of people following a restricted diet. Participants shed 55% less fat and 60% more lean muscle when they slept just 5.5 hours each night.
Hormones Provide Hints About Why
Numerous studies have examined the reason we tend to consume more food when we are exhausted. Insufficient sleep can trigger hormonal imbalances that impact our bodies negatively. Studies have revealed that there is a strong correlation between the function of the hormone ghrelin (the appetite hormone) and the number of hours we sleep. In the absence of sufficient sleep, the leptin (the hormone that causes fullness) levels fall, while ghrelin levels rise.
With the imbalance of hormones, it's no surprise that we eat more food. It’s a coping mechanism when we're slacking on rest. To soothe ourselves, we dramatically increase the amount of calories consumed. A meta-analysis revealed that those who are sleep deprived ate nearly 400 calories more each day, compared to people who slept enough. Researchers discovered that people who were sleep-deprived ate more sugar-laden, low protein food items.
Stress hormones can also be affected by the way we sleep. Sleeping deeply can neutralize stress hormones, however sleeping insufficiently causes an increase in stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which increases the risk of belly fat, heart disease and muscle breakdown.
