Do you crave starchy foods all day? Are you hungry all the time? Is your diet failing because you just can’t stop eating?
It could be that you simply aren’t getting enough sleep.
According to Dr. Joseph Ojile of the Clayton Sleep Institute, there is a direct connection between poor sleep and obesity. In fact, the National Sleep Foundation has found poor sleep habits to be such a part of obesity that they want obesity therapists to consider this issue in the fight against obesity with as much importance as diet and exercise.
The proof came in 2004 when a University of Chicago study found that poor sleep disrupted two appetite hormones. Apparently after only two nights of only four hours sleep, the subjects’ hormones became quite a mess and the hormone that usually tells your body there is no need for food slowed it’s production while the hormone that tells your body to eat increased. Subjects started craving more high-calorie, high-density, high-carbohydrate foods. In fact there was a marked increase (24 percent) in appetite for candy, cookies, chips, nuts and starchy foods such as bread and pasta.
Overweight moms, are you listening to this?
After a week, the subjects’ bodies could barely use insulin to the point where their bodies seemed almost diabetic and the continued loss of sleep increased cortisol levels (the hormone that we all know increases belly fat storage).
Before the scientific and medical community want to make such a claim as “lack of sleep makes you fat”, they want bigger studies done. As for me, I can accept this smaller study as proof enough because I’ve lived it! When my son was waking up all night and I only got about 4 hours of sleep a night (as opposed to my necessary 8-10), there just were not enough starchy carbs in the world for me to eat, I was constantly hungry and I couldn’t lose any weight no matter how I dieted or exercised.
The good news for all us overweight moms is that the test subjects did go back to their normal health (no cravings, less cortisol and no diabetes-like symptoms) once they paid their sleep debt (the amount of sleep they lost during the study). Now if we can just figure out a way for moms to get enough downtime to pay their sleep debt!
Can you say Rip Van Winkle?