Sometimes you gain weight when you lose sleep.  Will sleeping more help you drop the pounds?

Maybe.  First there is the relationship between the hunger hormone ghrelin and the fullness hormone leptin that we looked at yesterday.  When you are sleep deprived, your body produces more of the “eat” hormone and less of the “stop already” one.

And then there is just a natural response to that tired feeling that usually hits with a bang in the middle of the afternoon after a sleepless night.

You are so tired that you are teetering on the edge of a crash — but you have a long way to go before bedtime.  So what do you do?  You get a cup of coffee or a soda and find something sweet or salty to snack on.  The high-glycemic snacks give you a sugar rush and you have a temporary burst of energy.  But then you have a big insulin dump, and then you REALLY crash.  Back to the refrigerator, or the vending machine.

If this is a common scenario for you, you end up with extra pounds.

Sleep specialists say we need an average of seven and a half hours of sleep a night.  If you get around that and start sleeping a half hour more, it probably won’t make you drop ten pounds.

If, however, you get about five hours a night and start sleeping seven hours or so, it could make a dramatic difference in your journey to a healthier weight.  Your hormones will balance out as they should and you won’t get the killer “eat attacks” in the afternoon, so you are able to stick to your healthy eating plan.

Sometimes you can’t help having a short night.  People with small children who keep them up and folks afflicted with insomnia would much prefer to be snoozing.  But, it would pay for most of us to do what we can to get a good night’s sleep.

Eating to live and living for Christ,

Susan Jordan Brown