Are you trying to lose weight? Then get more, better quality sleep. Are you trying to maintain your weight? Then get more, better quality sleep. And, no, six hours per night does not qualify as sufficient sleep.
Sometimes we all get a little short on sleep during the work week. A recent study adds to the mounting evidence about just how harmful lack of sleep can be. In the Journal of Lipid Research, researchers reported that just a few days of sleep deprivation can make participants feel LESS full after eating and metabolize the fat in food differently.
In this study, participants were given a high fat, calorically-dense meal on multiple nights during the study. Researchers found that the participants felt less satisfied after eating the same rich meal while sleep deprived than when they had eaten it when well-rested.
Even more interesting was that the researchers found that sleep restriction affected the lipid (fat) metabolism after eating, leading to faster clearance of fats from the blood after a meal.
Faster clearance of fats from the blood after meals is not a good thing. In fact, guess where the body ‘clears’ these fats to? Fat storage in the body. This predisposes people to put on weight more quickly and also the inability to lose weight. These fatty lipids weren’t evaporating – they were being stored away on the body.
Most research seems to talk mainly about how a lack of sleep impacts a fast or slow metabolism, that we forget that a lack of sleep impacts many other body processes, including our ability to properly metabolize the fats we are eating.
The bottom line? Get more quality sleep if you are trying to lose weight or if you simply want to maintain your current weight.
Journal Reference:
- Kelly M. Ness, Stephen M. Strayer, Nicole G. Nahmod, Margeaux M. Schade, Anne-Marie Chang, Gregory C. Shearer, Orfeu M. Buxton. Four nights of sleep restriction suppress the postprandial lipemic response and decrease satiety. Journal of Lipid Research, 2019; jlr.P094375 DOI: 10.1194/jlr.P094375
