Can sleep affect weight loss? Expert offers tips

Can lack of sleep make it harder to lose weight and even make you gain weight? Know from an expert the correlation between your sleep and weight loss.

If you’re trying to lose weight, then your sleep hygiene may be just as crucial to your weight loss efforts as your eating habits and exercise routine. We frequently ignore sleep and never give it the attention it deserves. According to the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, sleeping fewer than the recommended 7 hours each night can increase your risk of adverse health outcomes such as weight gain, obesity, heart disease, depression or even stroke. As a result, both having a good night's sleep and sleep deprivation have potentially detrimental effects on one's ability to lose weight. Improved weight-loss techniques and a decrease in obesity will result from the relationship between sleep and weight.

Does sleep affects your weight loss? Expert offers tips (pexels )

Nutrition Coach and Dietitian, Liesl Rozario, suggested how sleep affects our weight, on her Instagram post.

Sleep and Weight loss

Several studies have been conducted looking at the relationship between body fat and sleep. The evidence suggests that not getting enough sleep each night is associated with more body fat. There appears to be an inverse correlation that the less sleep intake the more body fat there will be.

If you’re in a calorie deficit (i.e. dieting), not getting enough sleep can also mean you’re losing more lean mass rather than fat mass, which is not ideal.

Sleep Deprivation

Getting 3 hours of sleep less per night (5.5 hours instead of 8.5 hours) when dieting appears to be associated with an unfavourable nutrient partitioning effect, so more lean mass is lost during weight loss rather than fat mass. Short-term sleep deprivation has been seen to increase hunger by increasing the hunger hormone, leptin, especially when dieting. This led to a 20% increase in calorie intake.

Insulin Sensitivity

There is also a correlation between abnormal sleep patterns and metabolic syndrome, with less or poor sleep being positively correlated with the occurrence of the comorbidities of metabolic syndrome (insulin resistance, hypertension, obesity) and an increased risk of diabetes.

Another effect could be poor insulin sensitivity, and an increase in the risk of hypertension, obesity and diabetes.

So overall, not getting enough sleep can have negative effects on your weight loss efforts, body weight, and overall health. It may seem like an easy trade-off when you feel you don’t have enough time in the day but you should consider the other effects of lack of sleep that go beyond just being tired. Getting enough sleep should be a priority for everyone.

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