I’ve written about this phenomenon before: studies are showing how critical sleep is to weight control.   Previously, studies have shown that lack of sleep can lead to weigh gain, but in a recent rash of studies, the opposite has been found to be true also.  Getting a good night’s sleep can help you lose weight.  There are even some experts who site our nation’s lack of sleep as a cause of the obesity epidemic in our country.

I just read another study done by Glamour Magazine.  Basically, the staff at Glamour   was very skeptical that sleep alone could result in weight loss.  Seven women, of varying weights, signed up for the challenge.  Their charge was to get seven and half hours of sleep every night for ten weeks.  In fact, they were told not to make any other modifications to their diet or exercise.  At Glamour, they wanted to see if just sleep alone was enough to affect weight loss.  The results were in line with other studies are finding.   After the ten weeks, the average weight loss was eight pounds!  From this informal study, Glamour has demonstrated the importance of sleep to weight loss.

Dr. Michael Breus, a sleep and medical expert, told Glamour, “During deep sleep, your brain secretes a large amount of growth hormone, which tells your body how to break down fat for fuel.  Deprive your body of deep sleep, and when extra calories get stored as fat, there isn’t enough growth hormone to break it down. So your body takes a shortcut and packs it away in your butt, thighs, belly — wherever you tend to put on weight.”

It’s also been shown that the amount of sleep we get regulates the amount of two other hormones, ghrelin and leptin, which control appetite.  (more about these hormones in my previous article, Is sleep more important than diet?).  Basically, what it boils down to is that when we are sleep deprived we crave more food and tend to eat “junkier” food too.

In addition to the weight loss, participants felt better too.   In fact, some of them even enjoyed working out more because they actually had the energy to do it.  To read more about the participants and on Glamour’s tip on how you can fit more sleep into your life view their article.