Getting enough sleep is important.
Getting enough quality sleep is crucial.
How much you sleep, how well you sleep, and even when you sleep profoundly impact your overall health and wellness. Here are a few interesting tidbits highlighting how your relationship with sleep may affect your fat loss goals.
HOW LONG YOU SLEEP.
Can how long you sleep impact the amount of fat you lose when you diet?
To investigate this, researchers provided all participants with a diet that supplied 90% of the calories required to maintain their weight. From there, participants were divided into two groups- one who slept 8.5 hours per night and one which slept 5.5 hours per night.
Researchers found that the folks who slept 5.5 hours per night lost the same amount of weight as those who slept 8.5 hours each night. So sleep didn’t matter?
NOT SO FAST– the scale doesn’t tell the whole story.
Even though they lost the same amount of weight, those that slept longer actually lost more fat and retained more muscle while the short sleepers lost 60% more fat-free mass and retained more fat! The short sleepers also showed a decrease in the ability to use fat for fuel. In other words, they became more reliant on carbohydrate.
This may be part of the reason they craved more carbohydrates. Short sleepers also showed elevations in hormones that increase hunger and food intake, promote fat storage and decrease energy expenditure. They also showed a decrease in resting metabolic rate below what was calculated based on their loss of fat and fat-free mass.
In a nutshell, short sleepers lost more muscle, retained more fat, had a depressed metabolic rate and had a primed hormonal environment for fat gain.
HOW WELL YOU SLEEP.
In yet another study, investigators found that the amount of weight and fat loss during a diet intervention was related to the time spent sleeping and the quality of the sleep.
Participants who slept fewer than 6 hours, or had poor sleep quality had a blunted fat loss response regardless of caloric restriction.
In other words, despite following a nutrition plan that should result in fat loss, people who slept fewer than 6 hours or who suffered from poor sleep quality did not see the results expected from their diet.
Be aware that if you tend to wake up during the night, that matters, too.
Researchers determined that people with fewer than five wake episodes each night lost more weight and body fat than participants who had 5 or more wake episodes each night.
WHEN YOU SLEEP.
Ok, what if you get enough sleep, but aren’t sleeping at night?
When you are asleep, your metabolic rate is lower than it is when you are awake. This shouldn’t shock you since you are considerably less active when you are sleeping than when you are awake.
Sure, your body is still busy doing things, but your physical activity has basically come to a stop.
What you might find surprising is that your metabolic rate is different when you sleep at night and when you sleep during the day.
Researchers found that sleeping during the day, as is a common practice in shift workers, resulted in 12-16% reduction in energy expenditure compared to sleeping at night.
Essentially the human body is designed to sleep at night when it is dark and active during the day when it is light. Doing things at a non-natural time has repercussions.
In this case, if you were consuming the exact number of calories that you need to maintain your weight, but you were sleeping during the day and not at night, you would end up gaining weight. The reduced energy expenditure during daytime sleep reduces your total 24-hour energy expenditure. Not adjusting food intake accordingly will result in weight gain.
As you can see, there is a lot more to it than “just getting enough” when it comes to sleep and fat loss.
If you’ve been nailing your nutrition and still not seeing the results, you’re after it may be time to take a long, hard look at your sleeping habits.
