Lack of sleep may be hurting your metabolism
According to a new research study by the journal Obesity, if you don’t get enough sleep, that lack of sleep may have a negative impact on your body’s metabolism, causing your belly to bulge. For example, if you only get 4 hours of sleep for five straight nights, your body’s resting metabolic rate drops by almost 3 percent.
So – what does that 3 percent drop mean? 3 percent is about 42 calories per day. Over a week, that’s about 300 calories. Worse yet, according to Andrea Spaeth, Ph.D., the lead study author, is that since you’re awake longer the day of your short sleep, your body compensates by burning fewer calories the next day. This may possibly be due to the concept of homeostasis, which is the idea that your body is always working to keep things in balance. So, if you are away longer one day, your body used extra calories, so the next day, your body will burn less to make up for the previous day.
On top of this, Spaeth did an earlier study where she found that you may eat as much as 500 calories more than you normally would, the day after a bad night of sleep. This might be due to the theory that sleep deprivation may rev up hormones that make you feel hungry while deadening hormones that make you feel full.
So – be aware of this if you have a couple of nights with little sleep – because the study also found that after just one, 12-hour recovery snooze – your body’s metabolism returns to normal.
