Sleep and Weight Loss

Hello?!! Is anyone still out there?!

Its been a long time.... A really long time!  I kept thinking I would write a really grand post re-entering the blog sphere but it never seemed to happen,  so I will just pick up blogging where I left off.  I have reasons for not blogging at all in 2010,  but I'll save that for another post.   I have been reading your blogs,  and have missed posting, so I am hoping this is the start of a regular posting routine again.
 
This post I wanted to talk about sleep and its relation to body weight (an important topic for us runners!).

I am historically a yo-yo dieter (+/- 10 lbs).  I lose weight, then I gain weight. I was always able to lose the excess weight easily,  until the last year or so I have noticed it to be much more of a challenge forcing me to take a closer look at exactly what I was putting into my body.

Careful calorie counting,  healthy eating,  lots of cross training later,  I felt frustrated that the weight wasn't budging.  At first I blamed hitting my mid-thirties.  I was always hungry.  I would eat a healthy breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner. I would even blend spinach into shake and my work colleagues thought I was nuts!

 Even with the healthy, six small meals per day,  I would have these INSANE nighttime cravings.  Red wine, cheese, crackers= yum.  Nacho chips + guacamole + wine = double yum.   Cookies + wine =.... you get the idea.

I thought,  this is what getting older meant - loss of muscle, increase of body fat....increase in cravings...

But then I thought of all the fabulously fit people I know,  some who are decades older than me,  and I realized that blaming my weight gain on aging was a cop-out.  What are they doing differently?

In an attempt to tune into reasons for my weight gain/insane appetite a little closer,  I started evaluate my health checklist a little more closely and realized,  I was depriving myself of a basic physiological need:

SLEEP!

I have always been a short-sleeper.  In fact, it wasn't atypical for me to get 5-6 hours. With further research,  I discovered that sleep deprivation (sleeping less than 7 hours a night) can cause:

• An increase in the hormone Ghrelin which is released to increase appetite.  This explains my late night snacking habits!
• A decrease in the hormone Leptin,  which basically tells you to control the amount of food you shove in your mouth at any given time.

Basically this results in stuffing yourself with high calorie food and still not feeling very full.  A huge ah ha moment for me...

Also not sleeping can  (source)

• disrupt your metabolism of carbs, causing high blood levels of glucose, which leads to higher insulin levels and greater body-fat storage.

•reduces levels of growth hormone - a protein that helps regulate the body's proportions of fat and muscle.

• increase your risk of diabetes

•can increase blood pressure
•can increase the risk of heart disease

So I have been trying to sleep better since mid-December,  and I have noticed a huge difference in my energy level,  and control of my appetite.  I've lost a bit of weight in the process too (although its a work in progress!).  My workouts have also been better since I have been sleeping more. 

So I have moved sleep to the top of my priority list,  even above working out!

Do you sleep enough?  Do you notice a change in your appetite/weight/energy with more or less sleep?

Thanks for reading!