Sleeplessness and weight gain

An average human being requires at least 7-8 hours of sleep to be able to function normally. However, researches have shown that majority of the people today, especially young adults, only sleep 5.5 to 6 hours every night. The result of the lack of sleep, in short, is slow metabolism, and lack of capacity to make complex decisions properly.

This has to do with how your brain functions when you sleep less.

The lack of sleep negatively affects two parts of your brain which regulate eating habits. A medical study done by University of California, Berkeley, to understand the connection between sleep and weight gain showed that continuous lack of sleep (even for a week) led people to desire high-calorie food over healthy ones. This was verified using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain when the participants were asked to choose the snack they would wish to consume on nights when they stayed awake and were deprived of adequate sleep. This is associated with the body having low metabolism during these times, which affects the decision-making region of the brain. The people who woke late into the night believed that the high-calorie food would compensate for the energy they are spending by waking up for long. The part of the brain which was impacted the most was amygdala that maintains the appetite and craving for food. Apart from this research, many other studies done by Columbia University, New York, and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center also came to similar conclusions. Thus, if you do not get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night, you are probably going to end up gaining more weight than those who sleep adequately. While sleeping adequately will not lead directly to reduction of weight, it will ensure that your brain functions normally, and thus, you can make decisions which will keep your body healthy.

When you are awake at night, you are simply resting while binging on food frequently. As the above study shows, this is due to how the brain works. Some studies have pointed out that the hormone that regulates stress rises when you do not sleep well, causing you to search for ways to reduce it, and the best solution seems to be food. People also respond less to insulin, which increases their chances of getting type 2 diabetes. Thus, if you want to make sure that you do not put on weight unexpectedly, get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night.