Can severe lack of sleep cause you to gain fat and lose muscle mass?

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Mellouk89
Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
edited June 2020 in Health and Weight Loss
So I have had a really hard time sleeping for the past few months, my weight has stayed the same but I noticed i'm slightly fatter and it looks like my back muscles have shrunk. Is it an illusion? Apparently it's a real thing according to this article.

https://www.livescience.com/63404-poor-sleep-weight-gain-muscle-loss.html#:~:text=Skimping on just one night's,weight gain and muscle loss.

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  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    if you dont use muscles, you lose them ( or at least their definition and size)
  • EugeneOnegin123
    EugeneOnegin123 Posts: 2 Member
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    Yes, lack of sleep affects cortisol etc. Sleeping also burns calories, Also when you are sleeping your body does a lot of repair functions to muscles and brain etc xxx
  • EugeneOnegin123
    EugeneOnegin123 Posts: 2 Member
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    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.01437/full

    Sleep deprivation can also affect your aerobic performance
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,425 Member
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    If you're tired you're also likely to move less, those little things like fidgeting, shifting weight to another sitting position, sitting upright, moving legs and all those other things that also burn some calories.
  • Mellouk89
    Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
    edited June 2020
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    I use my muscles the same way but it seems i'm losing mass anyway
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
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    Are you lifting? Has the lack of sleep affected your lifting performance?

    You can recomp over time, so gain muscle and lose fat but stay the same weight overall. So I would imagine the opposite is also possible where you can lose muscle and gain fat over time.
  • Mellouk89
    Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
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    Yeah i'm not as performant in the gym, but I also heard that it shouldn't necessarily result in a decrease in muscle mass. Some people maintain while lifting considerably less heavy. I still train and do what I normally do. I find it weird that my weight stays the same but I look noticeably different.
  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
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    Are you bloated? Maybe you lost weight but are retaining water? It could be anything. But definitely want to improve that sleep if you can

    I personally can function on very little sleep and it doesn't affect my body composition and workouts too much, mostly just my mood >:)
  • Mellouk89
    Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
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    It affects my mood the most but I feel it physically too. And i'm talking 3-4 hours of sleep a night.
  • helaurin
    helaurin Posts: 157 Member
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    I'm running into a similar issue - lack of sleep. I'm noticing that as the lack of sleep continues night after night, I'm having a harder time getting motivated to exercise, getting tired faster, becoming more irritable in general. Looking over the past week: 2 hours, 5 hours, 5 hours, 4 hours, 7 hours, 4 hours, 3.5 hours. An average of 4 hours, 20 minutes - and that's not solid sleep, I wake up multiple times a night. raaqx1nqgmck.png
  • Mellouk89
    Mellouk89 Posts: 469 Member
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    What is this application? I'd like to track my sleep as well.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,425 Member
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    Mellouk89 wrote: »
    What is this application? I'd like to track my sleep as well.

    Probably something like a fitbit or similar. To be honest, I find it very meh on Fitbit: when I wake up and surf the net it gets recognized as sleep. Apparently you can't do relaxing things in bed like casual surfing or reading a book.

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