TUMMYTOX blogs.

4 ways lack of sleep is sabotaging your weight loss

Everyone knows that in order to lose weight you need to eat healthy and exercise. But did anyone ever tell you, none of that helps if you're not getting enough sleep? How does lack of sleep affect weight loss?

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1. Being sleep deprived messes up your "hunger hormone" production: ghrelin and leptin. Less leptin and more ghrelin mean more hunger and less calories burned during your metabolic processes. These powerful hormones are kept in the right balance by sleeping 7-9 hours a night.

2. When you haven't slept well in a while, the production of cortisol goes up. This is the so called "stress hormone" and it makes you have all the wrong food cravings. Couple it with leptin and ghrelin imbalance and you get a perfect storm of cravings and low self-control.

3. A single night of sleep deprivation can cause as much insulin resistance as six months on a high-fat diet, according to research. Insulin resistance is a condition in which the body does not use insulin efficiently to move glucose from the blood into the cells. It ends up being stored as fat in all the wrong places.

4. When you're sleep deprived, it's a bit like being drunk. You just don’t have the mental clarity to make good decisions, especially about the foods you eat—or the ones you don't. Your judgement becomes impaired and you're less likely to be aware of the consequences of your actions.

So you see, not getting your Zs could mean a lot more than just feeling a bit groggy the next day - it could be one of the main culprits why your weight loss transformation isn't going as well as it should.

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