January 17th, 2022 by Sarah Miles

5 reasons why good quality sleep aids weight loss

The desire to lose weight is one of the most common New Year resolutions and while obvious strategies like moving more and eating less will certainly help you achieve this, consider other factors that could support your endeavours to reduce weight and become healthier. One of the simplest, and often overlooked, things you can do is to improve the quality and amount of sleep you get. Believe it or not, this can have a direct impact on weight loss (or, conversely, gain).

Here are 5 reasons why better sleep = more successful weight loss.

Hunger hormones

It won’t be news to you that the hungrier you are, the more you are likely to eat. The level of hunger that you feel is, in part, affected by hormones. Ghrelin is a hormone that is released in the stomach when it is empty, triggering those hunger pangs. Leptin is a hormone that is released from fat cells that suppresses hunger and makes you feel full.

When you don’t get enough sleep, your body produces more ghrelin and less leptin, which makes you hungrier and therefore likely to eat more, past the point that you’d normally feel full. In fact, studies have found that the average sleep-deprived person consumes around 400 calories more a day than someone who has had sufficient sleep.

Better food choices

Getting better sleep can enable you to make better choices about the food that you eat. This is due to the reward centre of the brain being more stimulated by food when sleep deprived. This means you seek the more satisfying reward from high-calorie food. Getting a good amount of sleep means you’re less likely to desire the reward in this way, have better self-control, and therefore make better choices about what you eat.

Reduces late-night snacking

Getting an early night not only allows you to sleep longer but also reduces the opportunity to eat later in the evening as you’re less likely to get hungry again after your evening meal. Late-night eating is associated with decreased fat oxidation and can actually cause conditions that disturb your sleep such as acid reflux and indigestion. This can lead to a cycle of poor sleep causing overeating causing poor sleep and so on. You should ideally limit the amount of food you eat within 2 hours before going to sleep.
 

Helps metabolic rate

Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the number of calories your body burns when at rest. It is influenced by several factors, including your age, weight, height, gender, and muscle mass, but it’s also affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation can reduce RMR so making sure you get sufficient sleep can allow your metabolic rate to function properly and burn more calories without even trying.
 

More energy to be active

We all know that physical activity is key to burning calories. Getting good quality sleep gives us more energy when awake and this makes us more able and motivated to increase activity. Expending this energy then makes us more tired and ready for sleep again at the end of the day. Being better rested can also help us improve the quality of the activity we do as it can improve reaction time, increase endurance, improve fine motor skills, improve concentration, and give us better problem-solving skills.

Ultimately, eating less and moving more will help you to lose weight but getting good quality sleep is a key part of allowing you to do this successfully.