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People who are overweight or obese, their new year resolution had always been the same since past so many years, but unfortunately their new year resolution target is never achieved ever.
Weight problem is really a very sensitive issue for most of us, more so because in our society it's generally considered that 'slim is beautiful.' People go to any extent for 'quick fix' weight loss with crash diets. All protein diet, just salads, hours of strenuous exercises etc. but what surprises them is that their weight hardly decreases or even if decreases the reduction is not up to the satisfactory level of that person.
It might come as a surprise for many people that the amount of sleep that a person takes is also one of the factors which makes a person become overweight. According to the recent studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, sleep loss tends to increase hunger and affects the body's metabolism making it difficult to maintain weight loss or lose weight. People, who get less than 7-8 hours of sleep at night, tend to increase their hormone named ghrelin and a decrease in the hormone, leptin. These hormones produced in the stomach and the fat cells respectively have a great impact on the appetite of a person, infact a direct impact. When the hormone ghrelin increases and the other hormone leptin decreases, a person may experience an increase in appetite . The researchers concluded that an increase in appetite because of the increase and decrease of ghrelin and leptin respectively makes a person feel more hungry which leads to more of food intake, making the people sleeping less than 8 hours, become overweight.
There is another hormone called cortisol which controls the appetite of a person. Researchers have found that there is a decrease in this hormone as a result of less sleep. As a result of this the hunger pangs of a person increases making him feel hungrier than before, and thus making him put on more of unnecessary weight.
Other ways that sleep loss affects our ability to lose and maintain weight loss include:
- Interference with carbohydrate metabolism which may cause high blood glucose levels.
- Excess amounts of glucose encourages the overproduction of insulin which leads to the storage of excess body fat, as well as leads to insulin resistance (a significant sign of adult-onset diabetes).
Thus if you really want to lose weight you will not only need to keep a watch on your appetite, the kind of food you intake, and the exercise but also the number of hours of sleep that you take at night. Get those necessary 7-8 hrs of sleep at night howsoever busy you may be in your life but if you want to lose weight you have to pay attention to this aspect of weight loss as well. Therefore the magic-mantra for the weight loss apart from diet and exercise should also be 'snooze and lose'. |
