Sleep deprivation may lead to overeating

Another study about eating behavior and sleep. This time, researchers studied young, healthy people in a controlled sleep lab for two weeks straight. They restricted half of them to 5 hours per night for 5 nights, then let them sleep up to 9 hours per night. The other half slept up to 9 hours per night for 5 nights, then were restricted to 5 hours per night. When the participants were only sleeping 5 hours per night, they burned more calories, but they also ate more. And the tended to eat more of their calories closer to bedtime than the well-rested group. Interestingly, appetite controlling hormone levels were not altered as expected during the sleep deprivation phase. The researchers concluded that sleep loss does not make you overweight and getting more sleep will not make you lose weight. I wish weight loss was that easy. It still boils down to eating less calories, regardless of how many hours you sleep.