Want to lose weight? Try some sleep!!!

You have been wondering what's wrong with your body lately.

You have stuck to your diet.

You work out fairly regularly.

You don't smoke or drink.

But -- horrors! -- you have put on a few kilos.

Hmmmm! Let's see.

Does lack of sleep figure among your lifestyle habits?

If it does, it could be the reason for the new statistics on the weighing scale.

Studies published on December 6 in Washington say losing sleep could increase the levels of the hormones associated with appetite and eating behaviour.

A team led by Eve Van Cauter, professor of medicine, University of Chicago, studied 12 healthy men in their early 20s. They measured circulating levels of leptin (this hormone tells the brain there is no need for more food) and ghrelin (this triggers hunger) before the study and after two nights of only four hours of sleep and after two nights of 10 hours of sleep.

Dr Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University, California, led a team that examined 1,000 people in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. They measured each person's sleep habits, the sleep pattern on the night before the examination and their leptin and ghrelin levels.

Here are some findings:

1. According to the first study, there was an 18 percent reduction in leptin, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin.

2. After four hours of sleep, the ratio of ghrelin rose to 71 percent, when compared to the level it was at after a nine-hour sleep schedule.

3. Interestingly, the young men who slept fewer hours displayed a fetish for candy, cookies and cake over fruit, vegetables or dairy products.

'We don't yet know why the food choice would shift,' Eve Van Cauter, professor of medicine, University of Chicago, said on cnn.com.

She adds, 'Since the brain is fuelled by glucose, we suspect it seeks simple carbohydrates when distressed by lack of sleep.'

4. The second study, which used the Body Mass Index as an indicator, found that the less people sleep, the more they weigh.

5. Those who slept five hours or less per night had, on average, 14.9 percent more ghrelin and 15.5 percent lower leptin levels than those who slept eight hours a night.

6. The researchers found that sleep is relaced by added calories.

'Our results demonstrate an important relationship between sleep and metabolic hormones,' the researchers wrote in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal.

Samreedhi Sharma, nutritionist and fitness expert , adds, "What most people don't realise is that lack of sleep also leads to water retention, leading to those extra kilos on the weighing scale. Your metabolism also slows down, which means you take that much longer to lose weight."

The answer is simple: If you want to lose weight, catch up on those zzzzzs!

Sleep well. Sweet dreams!


Lol i never gonna lose weight lol

Bloody hell, I lost half a stone just reading that post! (only kidding Mike)

I'll suggest that to some of my more rotund acquaintances, at least if they are sleeping longer they’ll spend less time stuffing their faces.

^ yup it's probably got as much to do with having less time to eat at night and in the morning as the sciencey bit.

the only real way to lose weight is to stop eatign as much crap and exercising.

only takes you 15-20 minutes to do some push ups and ab workouts.

Too true, and if you get into a regular pattern exercise becomes a habit, it’s not difficult to do positive things if you just have the discipline to stick with it for a few weeks until it becomes natural, perhaps I’m a little unsympathetic to people who say they “can’t” make themselves stick to an exercise plan.

Exactly my thoughts I hate it when people say they don't have time to exercise and keep complaining about their weight, while they sleep in nearly every day and hang around in front of the tv every evening... I've got a busy scedule with training 8x a week, studying everyday, working etc - I just have to see my exercising as my chill-out moment of the day and it works perfectly. You'll get a lot more energy out of exercising compared to hanging in front of the tv with a bag of crisps...