Sleep

bendyourkneekatie

I've seen a few people comment lately about the importance of sleep when it comes to weight loss. I'm interested if anyone knows anything about this, if there's any evidence for it or if it's just one of those myths. (Obviously outside of being tired means your more likely to overeat and not exercise)

Disclaimer: I ask as a chronic sleep deprived mum who has pretty easily lost weight once I started calorie counting and not binging my tiredness away. *but* I have retained more weight around my belly then I had last time I was this weight, and am wondering (again) if it's more than two pregnancies/breastfeeding hormones, as I've also seen talk of sleep deprivation causing tummy fat retention.

kshama2001

How Sleep Loss Adds to Weight Gain

Losing sleep tends to make people eat more and gain weight, and now a new study suggests that one reason may be the impact that sleep deprivation has on the brain.

The research showed that depriving people of sleep for one night created pronounced changes in the way their brains responded to high-calorie junk foods. On days when the subjects had not had proper sleep, fattening foods like potato chips and sweets stimulated stronger responses in a part of the brain that helps govern the motivation to eat. But at the same time, the subjects experienced a sharp reduction in activity in the frontal cortex, a higher-level part of the brain where consequences are weighed and rational decisions are made.

The findings suggested that one unfortunate result of sleep loss is this “double hit” in brain activity, said Matthew P. Walker, an author of the study and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. A sleepy brain appears to not only respond more strongly to junk food, but also has less ability to rein that impulse in.

Read more: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/how-sleep-loss-adds-to-weight-gain/

bendyourkneekatie

Gosh that sounds familiar...

tiptoethruthetulips

Yes lack of sleep can cause havoc with the hormones leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin signals the brain when we are satisfied while ghrelin tells the brain that we are hungry.

crazyjerseygirl

Congratulations on the new little bundle of joyous sleep depravation. I can't answer the bit about where you gain weight now (pregnancy changed that for me too, I assumed baby just kicked my fat over, haha!) but here is a nice article from the Mayo clinic explaining the connection between sleep and weight. They explain it better than I can!

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sleep-and-weight-gain/faq-20058198

bendyourkneekatie

crazyjerseygirl wrote: »

Congratulations on the new little bundle of joyous sleep depravation. I can't answer the bit about where you gain weight now (pregnancy changed that for me too, I assumed baby just kicked my fat over, haha!) but here is a nice article from the Mayo clinic explaining the connection between sleep and weight. They explain it better than I can!

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/expert-answers/sleep-and-weight-gain/faq-20058198

Thanks and thanks for the link.

I wish they were new, but I've basically been massively sleep deprived since #1 appeared 2.5 years ago. She started sleeping well at 17 months, which was perfect as her insomniac little sister was born then, just to keep the tradition going...

I've basically had to train myself to not respond to the "omg so tired need sugar and carbs to get through day/not collapse/stop crying" response. Telling myself again and again "no, it doesn't work, you don't feel better, food is not the answer" until I stopped eating all the muffins my town had to offer...