Weight Loss - Making Up Your Sleep Deficit

Sleep Away the Pounds: Optimize Your Sleep and Reset Your Metabolism for Maximum Weight Loss
by Cherie Calbom, John Calbom

(Page 3 of 7)

If you think you can go for a few days with much less sleep than normal and then get a good eight to nine hours, feel rested, and get right back on schedule, you may be disappointed. You'll have to make up your sleep deficit, say the experts. That means you will actually have to sleep the hours you missed to make up the difference.

Does that mean that if you've missed years of sleeping well, you'll have to become Rip Van Winkle - the character in a children's story who slept for twenty years? Not exactly. But while you won't have to hibernate for a year or two, you do need to sleep extra hours for a while. Many people find that at times they need even more make-up sleep than the hours of sleep lost because they're so exhausted. Harvard undergraduates, a high-achieving, sleep-deprived population, frequently go home for Christmas vacation and pretty much sleep for the first week.

Dr. Charles Czeisler, chair of Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine, says, "Someone restricted to only five hours of nightly sleep for weeks builds up a cumulative sleep deficit. In the first place, their performance will be as impaired as if they had been up all night. Secondly, it will take two to three weeks of extra nightly sleep before they return to baseline performance. Chronic sleep deprivation's impact takes much longer to build up, and it also takes much longer to recover."

Naps can help you make up a sleep deficit. Short naps, up to forty minutes, can be helpful. Otherwise, you'll go into deep sleep and be groggy when you wake up. If you need more sleep, nap for at least two hours, which will allow your body to slumber through a full ninety-minute sleep cycle and awaken refreshed.

The Links Among Sleep, Hormones, and Weight Loss

A number of studies have found direct links among lack of sleep, the hormones that get out of balance as a result, and weight gain. "Sleep loss disrupts a complex and interwoven series of metabolic and hormonal processes and may be a contributing factor to obesity," says John Winkelman, MD, PhD, medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

When we don't get adequate sleep, some key hormones get out of whack, namely leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, insulin, and growth hormone. When this happens, we can end up with an uncontrollable appetite, and we often crave the most fattening foods. We won't be able to handle stress as well. And our deranged hormones can even cause us to sleep poorly, further compounding the problem.

Hormones disrupted by loss of sleep Leptin. The hormone leptin regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates and signals the body when it should feel full and begin making fat; it is significantly affected by lack of sleep. When there are low levels of leptin, the body craves extra food, especially carbohydrates, regardless of whether or not adequate calories have been consumed. This can easily lead to weight gain. Ghrelin. Ghrelin triggers appetite and has been found at higher levels in those who get too little sleep. It also suppresses fat utilization in fat tissue. Insulin. The hormone insulin helps manage glucose metabolism. Low insulin levels cause increased appetite, poor sugar metabolism, and hypoglycemia. Continual big spikes and dips in insulin can cause insulin resistance and lead to type 2 diabetes. Low insulin during the night can contribute to low blood sugar, known as nocturnal hypoglycemia, which can cause you to awaken and not get back to sleep. Cortisol. Cortisol plays a role in regulating appetite. The more balanced your cortisol levels, the easier it is to control your appetite. Too much of this stress hormone, on the other hand, can cause fat deposition, especially around the midsection. And if this hormone is secreted in high amounts during the night, you won't be able to sleep well. Growth hormone (GH). A lack of sleep can diminish the production of GH - a hormone that helps inhibit weight gain. GH plays an important role in controlling fat deposition and muscle development. Having less of this hormone increases your chances of not sleeping well and being overweight.

As you read this book, you'll see just how important it is to sleep the hours your body needs and to sleep well so that you can balance these hormones. In the sections that follow, leptin, a major hormone that controls appetite, is discussed at length because it has such a significant impact on appetite and weight loss. And following leptin, insulin, ghrelin, cortisol, and growth hormone imbalances are covered, because all these hormones are affected when you don't get adequate sleep.

Many people have these hormone imbalances. You may have such imbalances and not even know it. Maybe you tend to crave things you really don't want to eat, or there are times it's harder to lose weight than others. Perhaps there are some days when you handle stress better than others, and days when you don't sleep very well. All these symptoms can be hormone-related.

The good news is that our four-step Sleep Away the Pounds Program will help you bring your hormones into balance. It's all four aspects of the plan - sleep, stress reduction, exercise, and diet - that best help you bring your body into harmony so you can lose weight and enjoy the life you were meant to live.

Copyright © 2007 by Cherie Calbom and John Calbom

About the Author

Cherie Calbom is known to millions of fans as "The Juice Lady," and her infomercials are world-renowned. A registered nutritionist, Cherie Calbom has become one of America's foremost celebrity experts on "drinking your vitamins." Her previous books, Juicing for High Level Wellness and Vibrant Good Looks (Crown, 1999), and Juice Lady's Guide to Juicing for Life (Avery, 1992).

John Calbom, MA, is director of Trinity Retreat House and vice president of Trinity Wellness Institute. He is a behavioral medicine specialist, organizational development consultant, Eastern Orthodox priest, and coauthor of The Complete Cancer Cleanse.