How To Know If Your Food Cravings Are Due To Sleep Deprivation
Posted on April 28, 2014 by Filomena Iorio-Tasoluk, One of Thousands of Family Coaches on Noomii.
Do you find yourself sleeping less so you can do more? Find out if your urge to eat is linked to the number of hours you sleep each night.
About three weeks ago, my daughter had her first sleep over party. Seven of her friends attended and, for most, it was their first sleep-over. Although they had the time of their life eating and participating in the games and activities I had planned, it was a lot of work for me and the responsibility of watching the girls throughout the night didn’t leave me much room for getting a good night’s sleep. The following day, after everyone left, I was exhausted! I can’t remember the last time I felt that way but it was to the point that I felt delusional! Not a good thing when you have two little kids to take care of…LOL! What was interesting was my exhaustion and lack of sleep left me feeling hungry, like I hadn’t eaten in days. I was tired, miserable and hand had this strong desire to eat. I ended up eating stuff I didn’t even like – hot dogs, chips, cake. I wanted to eat something, anything and that’s what was available so that’s what I ate.
Since I started taking care of myself and making my well-being a priority, I’ve been pretty good about getting in at least 7 hours of sleep each night so I had completely forgotten what it was like to have these cravings. Instead of beating myself up for making poor food choices, I decided to turn this experience into a great opportunity and give you a breakdown on why I was out of sorts:
- Sleep deprivation increases your appetite. Ghrelin is the hormone that makes you feel hungry and Leptin tells you when you’re full. When you’re lacking sleep, it causes a hormone imbalance so you’re inclined feel hungrier and eat more.
- Sleeplessness impairs your cognitive skills. It disrupts a person’s memory and the ability to think and process information clearly. Because your body is craving sleep, you’re unable to be present and focus.
- Sleep loss will leave you feeling lethargic and unmotivated to get through the day depriving you from making decisions with confidence and clarity.
- Sleeping less increases anxiety and depression. You may experience higher levels of anxiety and depression because your body is unable to regulate its mood.
- Lack of sleep increases your production of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is responsible for the “fight or flight” response we have when we’re under any kind of stress, whether it’s mental, physical or emotional.
- The less you sleep the less your body burns calories….WHAT ?!?!?! WHY ?!?!?! One reason is because during the sleep cycle, REM sleep is the prime time our body burn calories. If we don’t experience longer periods of REM sleep, our body doesn’t have the proper time to burn calories and fat.
So, the next time you feel the urge to eat coming on and you can’t figure out why, think about how many hours of sleep you had the night before.
