Sleep's Critical Role in Weight Loss
Losing weight and getting more high-quality sleep are the best things you can do to improve your long-term health. But did you know they are inherently linked?
To lose weight, you need to run on a calorie deficit, which means consuming fewer calories than your body needs to maintain weight.
However, a calorie deficit is useless without a healthy, active metabolism to convert food into energy and burn off what you eat.
Sleep plays a critical role in regulating metabolism, with a lack of sleep slowing down calorie burn and diminishing the body's ability to convert fat into energy. This can stop your weight loss efforts in their tracks.
An underactive metabolism burns fewer calories, so you might not lose weight even if you eat less and move more to create a calorie deficit.
Sleep and metabolism – the link
Sleep loss significantly impacts metabolism, which has been scientifically shown to make people metabolically groggy. Restricting sleep for four days alters fat metabolism and changes our satisfaction after eating.
The question is, why?
When we sleep, we burn fewer calories because we are inactive. This natural, nocturnal process conserves energy, enabling cellular repair, inflammatory response, and other bodily maintenance that can only happen when we are asleep.
Without that bodily maintenance, your body enters a prolonged state of energy conservation during the day. This self-protection reduces calorie consumption, making you burn less energy and stunning weight loss.
Sleep and bad dietary choices
There is also a link between sleep loss and bad dietary choices.
For example, people who sleep less have elevated ghrelin levels and significantly increased feelings of hunger the following day, and a lack of sleep increases leptin. This hormone is responsible for suppressing appetite.
A lack of sleep makes you hungrier and more dissatisfied after eating, leading to bad dietary choices and a craving for sugary foods.
Bad dietary choices can also significantly impact sleep quality, keeping you awake and making it harder to stay asleep.
Additionally, poor nutrition contributes to tiredness and our capacity to work, making us feel more tired and less able to exercise and go for a walk. This reduces our active calorie consumption because we move less.
Sleep and reduced motivation
Sleep deprivation's mental and physical strain is enough to dampen even the most optimistic and positive people.
Sleep deprivation reduces our willpower, making it more likely that we'll drive to work instead of cycling or skip the gym and watch TV instead.
Less motivation to exercise and put in physical work equals lower calorie consumption, which can stunt your weight loss efforts.
Research shows that when sleep deprived, our ability to perform tasks that require additional energy is impaired, and the ability to overcome deficiencies is limited, so we are less likely to get things done when sleep deprived.
Sleep and muscle growth
If you are trying to lose weight, you are trying to shift fat – not muscle.
Ideally, you want to preserve as much muscle as possible during a diet because muscle weighs more than fat and burns more calories but is also much denser, making you look slimmer because it takes up less space.
Sleep is critical to muscle maintenance because it releases protein-building amino acids into the bloodstream at an increased rate to build and maintain muscle.
Research shows that sleep deprivation puts muscle mass at risk. Acute sleep deprivation also decreases muscle protein synthesis, so even if you eat well and get your protein in, it is not enough to counteract sleep deprivation.
Summing up
Sleep is critical in regulating metabolism, hunger, appetite, motivation, willpower, and muscle maintenance. Add these elements together, and you have a recipe for stunted weight loss on an enormous scale.
It is in your best interests to sleep more. Check out our 10 sleep tips article for advice and our insomnia tips article if you lie awake all night.