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Did you know that sleep can have a significant impact on your metabolism and even your weight too? Research shows that getting an adequate amount quality sleep can help you maintain a healthy weight and metabolism by supporting your body’s ability to process energy. It’s recommended for all adults to get between 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and getting less sleep or even more can cause metabolic changes. There are three main pathways in which your sleep habits can affect your metabolism: hormone regulation, glucose processing, and energy expenditure.
Hormone Regulation: Sleep helps to regulate some of our body’s hormones including ghrelin, leptin, and cortisol. Ghrelin is responsible for increasing your appetite and making you hungry, leptin is responsible for lowering your appetite and making you feel full, and cortisol is a stress hormone that helps regulate many things including your metabolism and blood glucose levels.
Studies have shown that even after just a few days of being sleep deprived (sleeping less than 7 hours per night) or not getting quality sleep, your body can start to produce increased levels of ghrelin and decreased levels of leptin. This can cause you to feel hungrier throughout the day with more cravings and the inability to feel as satiated or satisfied after a meal. Some studies have found that people who are more sleep deprived crave higher calorie foods and tend to eat more unhealthier foods and more food in general than those who have good sleep habits. For someone who’s working on losing weight or anyone trying to maintain a healthy weight, this can put a great strain on their diet and efforts and cause weight gain.
Getting less or more sleep at night or delaying your bedtime regularly can also alter your body’s cortisol secretion patterns. Typically, cortisol levels are lowest near midnight and increase towards waking hours, peaking around 9:00am. If you fall asleep later and/or wake up later in the day though, this could lead to prolonged higher cortisol levels and higher cortisol levels later in the day. With cortisol being associated with stress and responsible for helping to increase glucose production to provide our body’s with energy in the morning, excess cortisol can have many negative metabolic effects. It can cause excess blood glucose production, weight gain, feelings of stress, increased cravings, further trouble sleeping, and more. By getting an adequate amount of quality sleep each night though, you can help keep these hormones in balance to help maintain a healthy metabolism and weight.
Glucose Processing: Excess blood glucose production due to increased cortisol levels or unhealthy eating habits can affect your blood sugar levels and how well your body uses insulin to combat high blood sugar levels. Due to increased blood sugar levels, your body will attempt to produce more insulin and is likely to store more fat causing weight gain. Over time, this may even lead to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs when cells in the liver, fat, and muscles do not respond well to insulin, and in turn, makes it harder for your body to process the sugar (glucose) in your blood. This can even lead to an increased risk of developing prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Getting enough sleep can help to regulate your cortisol levels and blood glucose levels to help maintain a good weight and help prevent the risk of developing insulin resistance or diabetes.
Energy Expenditure: When you regularly get less sleep, your body can also start to struggle to expend energy and burn as many calories throughout the day. Your metabolism may slow due to sleep deprivation and in turn, you may start to burn fewer calories at rest and even during exercise. This means that if you’re eating the same amount, exercising, or even if you’re following a calorie deficit diet, you could potentially still gain weight due to a slower metabolism. This can be extremely frustrating if you’re trying to follow a healthier diet and lose or maintain a healthy weight but don’t see the results.
Knowing how important sleep quality is to your metabolism, how do you improve your sleep if it’s something you struggle with? Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to just catch up on sleep over the weekend. You should try to keep a regular sleep schedule and not sleep too late into the morning. When winding down for the night, you can help your body’s natural circadian rhythm by limiting TV and phone activity before bed, not eating too close to bedtime, and sleeping in a dark room. If you struggle to fall asleep, you can also try being more active during day and exercise more. Getting enough quality sleep is key to helping to regulate hormones that affect our appetite, stress, blood glucose, and maintain a higher metabolism level so keep sleep as a priority in your daily health and diet.
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