By Mark Carroll
Sleep is one of the four main pillars we focus on when it comes to achieving fat loss results. To answer the question “Does poor sleep affect fat loss results?”, we need to look into the matter from two points of impact: indirect and direct.
Indirectly yes, poor sleep does affect fat loss. Directly, not so much as the fat loss will still come down to energy balance or creating a calorie deficit. If you have amazing sleep but you’re not in a calorie deficit, you’re not going to achieve fat loss. However, if you have poor sleep and you are in a calorie deficit, it will affect the fat loss indirectly.
Poor sleep & indirect fat loss impact
How and why does poor sleep indirectly affect fat loss? Having poor sleep can affect hormones that regulate satiety, and basically overall hunger cravings. When you have poor sleep your leptin levels, the hormone that regulates satiety, decreases. So, when leptin decreases, the feeling of fullness is lowered or shortened. Not feeling full after a meal is obviously not a great thing when it comes to fat loss.
Does poor sleep make you hungry?
Another thing which poor sleep affects is your ghrelin, or hunger hormone rises. This is because ghrelin and leptin have an inverse relationship, meaning when one is high, the other is low. When ghrelin rises, it signals to your body that you are hungry and the hungrier you are the more likely you are to over-eat. This is how poor sleep indirectly affects fat loss as it makes you hungrier and from having fewer satiety signals. Not a good combination when you are trying to lose weight.
To summarise, if you want to achieve your fat loss transformation make sure you get proper, consistent and long enough sleep time to avoid poor satiety, otherwise your weight loss result will become harder to achieve.
Learn more about managing sleep and your lifestyle for optimal fat loss results with my online guidebooks.
Yours in health,
Mark Carroll,
Global Head of Education
Clean Health Fitness Institute
