Yet another thing is working against you in your quest for an itty bitty waist (but probably helping you succeed at having a round thing in other people’s faces): your sleeping habits. Everyone has different sleep needs, but the average is between 7 and 9 hours a night, and even getting an hour less than you need can have consequences on your circumference. Unfortunately, not everyone can catch enough shuteye to keep themselves beauty sleep-fresh — and that’s especially true if you’re working long hours at multiple, stressful jobs. Sound familiar, Modern Woman?
New research backs up the other million studies that say your all night partying and slutting around town/work and school commitments are turning you into a chubosaurus. In the experiment, 16 test subjects (both men and women) were allowed to sleep a luxurious just five hours a night.
They locked their 16 test subjects, one by one, in a calorimeter room, which measures every bit of energy that a person burns. When the subjects were allowed to sleep just five hours a night, they burned more energy than when they were allowed to sleep for nine hours a night.
“The amount of energy they burned was equivalent to doing water aerobics for 25 minutes,” says Kenneth Wright, a physiology researcher at the University of Colorado and a co-author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Burning more calories sure sounds like an upside to sleep deprivation. But here’s the downside: Those sleepy subjects also showed less self-control when presented with three abundant meals and snacks daily.
When well-rested, the women had “more food restraint,” Wright says. The men proved less strong-willed. They chowed down, gaining weight even when getting plenty of sleep.
When sleep deprived, the women lost that restraint. Both men and women ate more. They did that while ignoring signals from hormones that typically tell the brain that the stomach is full.
TL;DR: While sleep deprivation sounds like an excellent way to lose weight in the short term, it’s untenable in the long term because of increased pie eating.
In practice, that meant participants routinely skipped breakfast and ate much more carby and fatty foods at night. In just five days, they gained almost two pounds each.
The best cure? “Sleep has to be a priority,” says Wright.