How Better Sleep Can Help Weight Loss

How can sleeping help me lose weight?

What we know now is some great studies have been done within the last two years about the relationship between sleep and weight loss and weight gain. There are two hormones in particular, one called leptin and the other is called ghrelin that have specific amount to do with appetite. I can never get, keep the two straight, so the way I remember it is the ghrelin is the go hormone and leptin is the stop hormone. So what happens when you're sleep deprived, you have too much ghrelin, too much go in you, which is telling you to eat, and not enough stop in you, which is telling you when you're full. So you end up overeating or eating more than you really need to when you're sleep deprived, so it can cause weight gain. Another thing we know about sleep deprivation is that your metabolism slows down. Well, if you have a slow metabolism, you're not burning fuel efficiently, so it's going into fat storage and fat deposits, and again, causing more weight gain. We also know with sleep deprivation, we have increased levels of cortisol. Well, that can be another problem which causes more appetite. Here's the most fascinating part about the research I think. All those other things aside, when you're sleep deprived, if I was to lay out a healthy snack for you, or a very non healthy, sugary snack for you, you'd gun for the sugary food. You would go for the less healthy food, so your food choice is even affected by sleep deprivation.

How?

They are not one hundred percent sure how, but that craving that you're having seems to be more towards a comfort food which tends to be high carbohydrate, high sugar, high fat.