Don’t we all wish it could be done that way…
But now that I have your attention, read the article below. It is about sleep deprivation affecting our food choices. It does not cover other mechanisms by which lack of sleep promotes obesity, namely, the negative effects of poor sleep on the microbiome and insulin resistance. The latter is also increased by an unbalanced microbiome.
Still, we do well to budget good sleep into any weight-control program.
I hope this information doesn’t keep you awake fretting about loss of sleep and weight gain!
Reference
The impact of sleep deprivation on food desire in the human brain.
J. Nat Communications 2013;4:2259
“Epidemiological evidence supports a link between sleep loss and obesity. However, the detrimental impact of sleep deprivation on central brain mechanisms governing appetitive food desire remains unknown. Here we report that sleep deprivation significantly decreases activity in appetitive evaluation regions within the human frontal cortex and insular cortex during food desirability choices, combined with a converse amplification of activity within the amygdala. Moreover, this bi-directional change in the profile of brain activity is further associated with a significant increase in the desire for weight-gain promoting high-calorie foods following sleep deprivation, the extent of which is predicted by the subjective severity of sleep loss across participants. These findings provide an explanatory brain mechanism by which insufficient sleep may lead to the development/maintenance of obesity through diminished activity in higher-order cortical evaluation regions, combined with excess subcortical limbic responsivity, resulting in the selection of foods most capable of triggering weight-gain.”
