Sleeping Habits That Affect Your Weight Loss

Summary

The goal of weight loss does not aim to simply lower the number on the scale. We want to lose weight in fat. And poor sleep habits can have detrimental effects on your weight loss journey.

The  Drawbacks to Weight Loss from inadequate sleep levels

• Less sleep means less energy for exercise and physical activity
• Studies show that low sleep levels while dieting produce less weight loss results, while also encouraging over eating
• The brain sees sleep as a necessary nutrient. Sleep deprivation increases the chance of developing cognitive disorders such as Dementia
• Cortisol is the hormone that tells your body to conserve energy. Not enough sleep causes Cortisol to be produced. Leading to your body storing more fat
• Research done through the University of Chicago found that within four days of insufficient sleep, your body loses its ability to process insulin by 30%
  • Struggle processing insulin leads to the body storing fats from the bloodstream
• Your sleep levels impact your Leptin and Ghrelin appetite hormones
  • Leptin decreases appetite, so high levels mean we feel fuller
  • Ghrelin stimulates appetite, it's considered responsible for the hunger sensation
• Food desire and food awareness are increased during sleep deprivation, specifically desire for high-calorie foods
  • This shows why sleep deprived people snack more often on carb rich sweets, compared to someone who gets adequate sleep
• Exposure to unhealthy foods showed increase in brain activity from areas in charge of rewards and cravings. Those with proper sleep levels did not show these changes
• Lack of sleep can increase levels of inflammation in the body, which can be linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer

Lets get you a Better Night's Sleep!

• At least an hour before bedtime, shut down your computer, cell phone, and TV
• Save the bedroom for sleep and sex. Think relaxation and release, rather than work or entertainment
• Create a bedtime ritual. Take a warm bath, meditate, or read
• Stick to a schedule, waking up and retiring at the same times, even on weekends
• Watch what and when you eat. Avoid heavy meals and alcohol near betime
• Avoid soda, tea, and coffee in the evenings, caffeine can stay in your system for 5-6 hours
• Turning out lights will tell the body to produce Melatonin, the sleep hormone
• Set your thermostat lower a few degrees when sleeping, keeping your room chilled will aid your body in keeping its natural temperature
• Partake in physical exercise during the day
• Aim to sleep around 7-8 hours a night

[ The following is the full transcript from this week's post. This is a health blog with a focus on weight loss. Please consider that all episodes are unscripted, direct to camera, with focused talking points. ]

I'm Doctor Cox and today I want to talk with you a little bit about sleep, and why it is important for your weight loss journey.

First, I want to define a few things when we are talking about weight loss I think it's important to distinguish weight that we see on a scale and the weight we are trying to lose.

When I talk about the context of weight loss, I am talking about body fat, weight loss, not overall weight loss. That’s really important for you to understand, because when you just weigh yourself on a scale, you may have a perception that you're not progressing the way you want, but depending on what you are doing, it may be that you are actually increasing muscle mass, and losing body fat, therefore, it is basically the neutral gain or loss so you have this perception that you are not losing weight, but you're actually kind of re-sculpturing in your body. So I think it important to understand when I’m talking about weight loss I’m talking about body fat loss.

One thing that’s important is to not underestimate or undervalue the importance of sleep in your weight loss journey. Sleep has a huge impact on you, both good and bad.

So, some simple things that sleep does, it may actually make you gain weight is, it simply gives you an opportunity to eat more if you're awake.

You're at risk of eating more, so increasing your length of sleep basically means you're going to have less opportunity to eat. So that is one benefit sleep has for you.

Another one is that we often associate weight loss with exercise. Now, first, in other videos, I give I will talk to you about exercise weight loss, but the reality of it is, weight loss itself is really nutrition dependent. Weight maintenance really is both nutrition and exercise.

What I'm talking to you about weight loss, is that it is possible to obtain weight loss without exercising, because the most important factor in weight loss is nutrition.

But having said that, often people associate exercise with weight loss, and if you're not sleeping well or you're not going to sleep, you're just going to be tired and when it comes time to exercise, you’ll tell yourself your just too tired.

So, it has an impact on your ability to exercise too, because simply if you're tired, you're less likely to do those types of things such as exercise.

Now, also, weight loss is important, to a kind of mental fatigue if you will.

So, I've already said, weight loss or sleep is associated with fewer opportunities to eat. But, if you're sleep deprived you're also going to make a poor mental decision because you really kind of have mental fatigue associated with that, and that means that you're most likely to make bad decisions in what you're eating.

If you look at it, sleep should be looked at that it is kind of a nutrient for the brain.
There are lots of studies that show that people that have sleep deprivation actually increases the likelihood of developing dementia or cognitive dysfunction.

And that's a known fact because it kind of look at it like sleep is kind of a cleansing time for the brain. And it's when kind of all the metabolic waste is being removed from the brain. And if you reduce that time, you're going to have a build-up of those kinds of metabolic waste products that basically are detrimental to your cognitive function.

Think of sleep as a kind of a nutrient for your brain.

One thing is, is if you don't sleep enough, it triggers cortisol.

And so you have chronically elevated cortisol. When you have that kind of problem, cortisol is a signal to your body to conserve energy. And that means you're going to have a harder time in, in the context of burning fat. Your body's now, basically trying to save energy because of the sleep deprivation.

Now also, how your body burns injury is dependent on how your sleep is, too. So let's say you're trying to lose weight. They actually did a study where they took people that were on a calorie-restricted diet trying to lose weight and seeing what the impact of sleep had on them.

So they basically put the group at of sleep deprivation component and another group that was in normal sleep. Both groups have the same amount of caloric intake.

Well, they found that in the group that was sleep-deprived, the weight loss wasn't significantly different than the people that were in the normal sleep group.

However, the type of weight loss was significantly different. For the people that were in the sleep-deprived group about a large percentage of their weight loss was due to muscle mass loss.

So, they were losing weight, but they were actually losing muscle mass, which is something we don't want to do.

In fact, they found out that, basically, their fat drop metabolism dropped by about 55%, and their protein metabolism increased by about 60%.

So, while, if you looked at them on the scale, this group both lost similar amounts of weight. But the sleep-deprived group was losing a significant amount of muscle mass as opposed to body fat.

But, secondarily, another study from the University of Chicago basically said that just four days of sleep deprivation really affects your body's ability to utilize insulin. And really, you become kind of insulin sensitive, or, more importantly, insulin-resistant is probably the more appropriate way to say that.

And they found that basically just with four days of sleep deprivation, people's insulin sensitivity decreased by about 30%.

What that means is you kind of become insulin resistant, which is well-known to be down a path of diabetes and things like that.

So, again, when we're talking about sleep and weight loss, sleep impacts us on the broad spectrum of things. It does affect our weight directly and indirectly, but it has a lot of other consequences.

It's essential that we are scheduling ourselves so we're getting adequate sleep.

When we're talking about the insulin response, basically what happens is, if you've started this insulin, what's not working well? You end up having more fat in your bloodstream. Which results in more fat being stored. So that's another consequence of sleep deprivation, is that you need to have adequate sleep because your insulin response is also dependent on adequate sleep.

Also, there are several studies that show sleep deprivation basically affects your food preferences. Sleep-deprived individuals tend to make bad food choices. Now, you can say, “Well, is this just really, a matter of willpower, that I've got that cognitive fog? So I'm just making bad food choices.”

Well, the reality is there's a physiological response.

So, subjects were taken. And they basically were looked at using various techniques to analyze areas of the brain during sleep deprivation. And they found that the reward mechanisms seemed to be more reactive to foods when you're in a sleep deprived state, meaning that if you're sleep deprived, not only are you making bad decisions because of the mental fog. But the way your brain is responding, it's wanting to reward you to make those decisions. And the fact that the reward mechanism is amplified in sleep deprived people.

Not only that, but it’s also more amplified by the types of food that you're being presented. So often people that are sleep deprived, that reward system is really kind of ramped up for the bad foods, the sugary snacks, salty snacks, high fat snacks. Your body's responding in a way that it's not just a matter of willpower. There's a physiologic response, and that's aggravated by sleep deprivation.

So if you look at it, one of the mechanisms of sleep affects two hormones in the body. One is Leptin and one is Ghrelin. Ghrelin is the hormone that tells us that we're hungry, and for some reason, when people are sleep deprived, these hormones, how they interact with each other, it becomes kind of malfunction. Leading to the state of always hunger and your leptins now not working as well.

Leptin is the hormone that tells us when you're full. And when you're sleep-deprived, there's really kind of dysregulation or a mechanism that they're not working together like, they normally would. And it kind of drives you, too feel hungry when you normally wouldn't be if you're sleep-deprived. But also, you don't feel as full as you would if you weren't sleep deprived.

There is hormonal facts related to sleep deprivation and your weight.

So, again, that's why I'm talking to you about sleep. Sleep is often overlooked, as one of those things, of “How does that, in fact, affect my weight.”

Remember, really, a 30-year life is spent in sleep. That also means a third of your basic metabolic burn occurs during sleep. And so it's important that we're, we're allowing ourselves time to sleep appropriately, so our body can do what it's designed to do during that sleeping period.

The final thing about why sleep is important is inflammation.

Sleep deprivation causes chronic inflammation. This is central to you because we know that chronic inflammation leads to bad things, like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer. But just as important, sleep deprivation, inflammation causes chronic pain, and that also restricts your movements.

When you're thinking about movement, I'm not just talking in the context of exercise, in fact, if you look at your, your basic basal, metabolic rate, and you'll see here, it's 2500 calories. Well, the majority of those burn during a non-exercise time, so normal activities of living. Is when you're burning most of your calories if you look at the 24-hour period. The problem is that if you have chronic inflammation, your activity levels go down. So you're walking back and forth to the car, to the grocery store, things like that, all are decreased because of chronic pain, which is secondary to chronic inflammation.

Sleep is essential to help prevent chronic inflammation.

So that's just some highlights about sleep. What are some things you can do to improve your sleep? Well, first of all, you can turn off technology, so, you know, a couple hours before you go to bed, stop using the computer, stop using your cell phone, and turn the TV off. It's well-known that not only the blue light but just the stimulation that affects your sleep.

Secondarily, save the bedroom for sleep.

That's really what you should look at. It is sleep and sex. Don't read in bed, don't do other activities in bed. Really kind of program your mind that when your laying in bed, you're they're asleep.

That takes me to a, you need to have a bedtime ritual. You should really go to sleep at the same time and get up at the same time. Even on the weekends, your body is very much dependent on your circadian rhythms. And you can really screw up those rhythms with just one night of sleep deprivation. And it's important to understand that the body doesn't really catch up during the weekend, that's the war on the weekend. One night of sleep deprivation is very detrimental to your body.

The next thing is what you eat and when you eat. Stimulants like caffeine nicotine, things like that should really be avoided long before your bedtime. But in addition, just regular food meals, dinner, things like that, you should probably have at least a couple hours of food intake prior to bedtime.

There are multiple reasons why. But if you eat right before bed, you may have gastric reflux, which can lead to indigestion, which interferes with your sleep. Then also your body's trying to metabolize food, which means somebody's trying to work, which also interferes with your sleep.

So, again, what and when you're eating is very important and in your sleep.

The next thing is the body's designed to sleep in a dark environment, so you may need to get blackout shades, or, or something like that. But, really, you want to have as much darkness or minimal light as possible.

Another thing is your body tends to actually cool off during the night. At about four in the morning, we actually see a temperature decrease. So a cold environment or cool environment actually does help asleep. So you might want to turn your thermostat down a little bit at night. So you have that cooler environment that actually does promote better sleep.

Then like I said, we'll talk more about physical activity in other videos, but it is known that if you have some physical activity in your day, that does actually promote better sleep.

Then finally, you really need to remember to try to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night. Anything less than seven years is detrimental. So you really should try to get a minimum of seven.

I know it's kind of a badge of honor the world on reducing sleep. But the reality is, if you're really trying to be a healthy person, and you're on that healthier wellness journey, adequate sleep, which means greater than seven hours you sleep, it's really what you need.

Take your sleep seriously.

That's going to help you be more productive, you're going to have a better attitude, and you're going to enjoy life more, and it's going to promote your more wellness for you.

Get some good night's rest.

Kelly Cox MD, FACEP

Member, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine

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