Lack of Sleep Increases Weight | Hacker News Reader

Lack of Sleep Increases Weight

nytimes.com

49 pointsrobg16 comments

This is true if you stay up all night trying to finish a project and then you have to go into the office the next day. The only way to keep yourself awake and alert is by consuming a higher amount of caffeine and calories than you normally would.

Or modafinil - which seems to have attracted a bit of interest in posts around here recently :-)

The conclusion of this article seems dubious to me.

"Losing sleep may increase appetite and, as a result, weight."

If you lose sleep you are, by definition, awake more which, it would seem to me, would cause your body to require more energy for functioning. Logically it would ask for this energy by stimulating appetite. Eating more is not strictly correlated with weight gain, you have to look at the types of calories being consumed.

Calories in - calories out is a remarkable good predictor of weight gain, though.

I have a coworker who recently wanted to lose 15 lbs. so she could fit into her wedding dress. She did up this spreadsheet with goal weight, predicted weight, and actual weight over the several weeks leading up to her wedding. The three curves matched up exactly, down to the pound. We were teasing her a little about just how scientific she'd made the process, and she said that it really came down to calories in - calories out. Once you know your body's basic metabolic rate over typical exercise conditions, every X calories above that will result in gaining one pound, while every X calories below that will result in losing one pound. The reason most diets fail isn't that the formula doesn't work, it's that most people don't have the willpower and anal-retentiveness to count calories like that.

You don't give human metabolism enough credit, as though you don't think that our bodies respond to different amounts of energy intake/usage. The main problem with the calories in = calories out myth is that they are assumed to be independent variables when they are self-evidently not. When you work out more, your body demands more energy by stimulating appetite. When you eat less than your body needs, you get cold and hungry.

The other problem is that it overlooks the role of insulin in weight gain. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage, this has been known for 50 years or more. Eating foods that stimulate insulin secretion are going to cause you to put on pounds - that's the job of insulin! If every type of calorie we consume contributes the exact same effect on the body, why do marathoners (or any other athelete for that matter) carb-load before challenges? Why not fat-load because everyone knows that fat has twice as many calories per gram?

My main point is that not all types of calories cause the same types of effects. Cutting calories below expenditures does not lead to long term weight loss, it leads to hunger.

This ties into the ugly cycle with obstructive sleep apnea. People who are a little thicker around the neck tend to stop breathing and interrupt their sleep. Of course, if you're not sleeping well, you'll have more trouble functioning, let alone getting proper exercise, so you'll just get thicker and thicker around the neck, you'll just make it worse and worse until you're so tired when you get up in the morning that you physically hurt.

My advice (from personal experience) if you're tired and cranky all the time, you've been told you snore, and your dress shirt size > 17'' or so, you should see a sleep medicine specialist.

Well the point is that sleep increase appetite, but who slept less actually burned more calories. If when you are craving for a snack you go for a carrot instead of pizza I'm sure results would be quite different.

According to the link, those who slept less had an increase in appetite, which is the opposite of what you claim in your first sentence. From the article:

> "After the night of abbreviated sleep, the men consumed more than 500 extra calories (roughly 22 percent more) than they did after eight hours of sleep. ... Some studies pin the blame on hormones, arguing that decreased sleep creates a spike in ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, and a reduction in leptin, which signals satiety."

I think what you want to say is that the studies have shown a correlation, but it might not be a causal relation.

Both studies took into account increased calorie expenditure in addition to intake: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20357041 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056602

Never debate some journalist's summary on these type of articles, just click through to their sources and read the actual conclusions.

When you are going without sleep there are usually more important things (short-term) than healthy food choices so you favour easy to prepare and easy to consume "meals". The fact that you have diminished short-term memory means you tend to prioritise decision making which again favours the "easy" option.

Your appetite does go up but anecdotally I wouldn't say 36 hours of waking appetitite was significantly more than two sets of normal 18 hour appetites.

Well I slept less than 5 hour per day and got a result totally reversed from what they said, thanks to my high metabolism

I also know someone from college who had some sort of thyroid condition, and she slept very little and was very skinny. She was also awake and hyper so much, she sewed all of her own clothes. (Yes, that's just like the girl in Real Genius!)

However, I also lost 10 pounds recently by doing just two things: sleeping 7 hours a night instead of 4 or 5 and cooking my own meals instead of eating out.

I still want Lazlo Hollyfeld's closet.

Not only does lack of sleep increase caloric intake, but you use up MORE calories while sleeping: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleeping-angels/200906/l...

It is relatively well-known that lack of sleep increases weight.

Looks like they just had a dry monday over at the NY Times and had to fill the empty space with something old and "sensational" :P This was taught to me 16 years ago in high school biology back home in Sweden.

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