Why lack of sleep can make you fat

When we look at the German Michel with his pajamas, nightcap and evening primrose, we could easily assume that we are a nation of late sleepers and nightcaps. If we are to believe current figures, however, this is not the case. In fact, we seem to have something against a restful night's sleep. Sleep to have. While our average sleep duration in 1960 was still around 8 hours, it has been reduced to less than 6.5 hours today.

We are not alone in this phenomenon, however, because as a study published in the Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome Journal in 2015 shows, 30 percent of U.S. Americans actually sleep significantly less than six hours per night. It is precisely this increasing insomnia, however, that is increasingly becoming a problem, as many people fail to understand that sleep is absolutely necessary for our minds to rest and our bodies to regenerate properly. Especially for athletes, the consequences can be fatal, because poor or too short sleep can negatively affect numerous metabolic processes. In addition to the regulation of the feeling of hunger, this also affects the regulation of the body fat percentage.

The less you sleep, the more calories you stuff into yourself

To understand the influence of sleep on weight gain, it is at least as important to understand the relationship between hunger and appetite. Hunger occurs whenever your body actually needs energy or essential nutrients. It is therefore a physical necessity. Appetite, on the other hand, is a purely mental matter that simply expresses the desire to eat something, whether or not your body actually needs nutrients. Sleep deprivation upsets the delicate balance between hunger and appetite, which, if the sleep deprivation lasts long enough, can have serious consequences for your figure. A study conducted in 2004 addressed this issue by subjecting 12 healthy, normal-weight men to sleep deprivation for a while, allowing them only 4.5 to 5 hours of sleep per night. During this time, the scientists monitored the subjects' caloric intake. They found that the lack of sleep reduced the blood concentration of the satiety hormone leptin by 18 percent. At the same time, the blood concentration of the hunger hormone ghrelin increased by about 28 percent. The bottom line is that this imbalance in hormone balance led to the study participants eating significantly more on the outside than usual throughout the day.

Fatigue affects what you eat and when you eat

It may seem a little strange, but the connection between lack of sleep and the urge to eat more makes perfect sense. When you sleep less, you're automatically awake longer. As a result, your body inevitably uses more energy to keep all of its metabolic functions working properly. In combination with the imbalance of your hormone levels, you eat more than you need. What's even more interesting is that sleep deprivation also affects what you eat. Tired people tend to eat much more carbohydrates throughout the day and develop an extreme preference for sweet things, which, to make matters worse, they like to snack on in the evening. Studies have shown that consuming foods with a high energy density in the evening can promote unwanted weight gain. This is especially because your metabolism shuts down in the evening and can no longer burn the calories that are still available too effectively, as is the case at lunchtime, for example. The bottom line is that a large proportion of the calories end up directly in the form of body fat on your ribs.

Bad news for your body composition

And once again, bad news for you, because there's also a direct correlation between prolonged sleep deprivation and body fat percentage. In a 2010 study, researchers divided overweight subjects into two groups that slept either 5.5 or 8.5 hours while they adjusted their diets to maintain a 10 percent calorie deficit. During this diet, both groups lost the same amount of weight. However, the really interesting factor is that the group of subjects that only got an average of 5.5 hours of sleep lost significantly more lean body mass than the group that slept longer. Especially if your goal is to optimize your shape and maintain as much muscle as possible, this is obviously the last thing you want. Another study supports this finding. In the course of this study, 19 subjects were given a sleep duration of 7-7.5 hours, until some had their sleep duration reduced by 90 minutes. During the first week, the subjects with the reduced sleep volume lost more weight than the subjects in the comparison group. During the following weeks, the weight of the sleep-deficit subjects increased again, due in part to an increase in body fat. And this despite a calorie deficit.

So how much sleep do you really need?

So at the end of the day, the question inevitably arises as to how long we should actually sleep in order to avoid a permanent lack of sleep and thus also the negative influences of sleep deprivation on body weight and body fat percentage. And because our bodies are so heartily complicated, this question cannot be answered in a blanket manner. In science, however, we speak of a range between 7 and 9 hours. It is therefore very likely that your optimal sleep duration is also in this range. The only way to find out is to experiment a bit and find your ideal sleep duration within this range. Of course, it is not a big deal if you deviate from this range from time to time. However, you should not regularly fall below your individual minimum sleep duration.

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