Sleep it off...

When I was a young and arrogantly thin girl of about 15, I went on a family vacation with a friend. We ate and ate and ate some more, with nary a concern for calories or fat content.

My friend’s grandmother looked at us one day while we were scarfing down even more vacation food and said, “I don’t know how you girls stay so thin…must be those late nights and lack of sleep.”

Wow. You should be really careful about what you say to impressionable girls. I mean, seriously, Grandma’s mouth to God’s ear. I took this as the True Secret of Weight Loss. Don’t sleep. Because one doesn’t question the wisdom of the Ancient or ask for scientific proof of her claim, I didn’t know she was talking straight out of her ass.

Of course, looking back, my guess is that the reason we stayed so thin while consuming vast amounts of food was because we spent the hours between meals walking, walking, walking…scouting out secure locations in the woods to smoke our cigarettes and drink our pilfered liquor. And then we would walk some more, looking for boys. (That didn’t change much over the years: Add liquor, look for boys.) Our 15-year-old metabolisms probably helped, too.

I am almost ashamed to admit how long I kept that little weight-loss pearl in my head. Every time I thought I need to drop five pounds, I would sleep about 3 hours a night. It seemed to work. Probably because I was such a zombie I didn’t have the energy to lift a fork.

As it turns out, people who sleep the least are often the most overweight. Why is that? According to research, hormones play a big role in sleep and appetite. There are two hormones specifically linked to appetite - ghrelin, which is produced in the gastrointestinal tract and stimulates the appetite, and leptin, produced in fat cells, which sends a signal to the brain when you are full.

In these studies, when sleep was severely restricted, leptin levels went down and ghrelin levels went up. The study participants’ experienced increased appetites and their desire for high carbohydrate, calorie-dense foods increased by 45%. They also had a higher level of body fat than those who slept eight hours per night.

Pretty interesting – for a science thing. Of course, an argument could be made for my non-scientific feeling that, if you’re sleeping, you’re not eating. If I am staying up late, I am probably going to get hungry around 11:00 pm. Four or five hours after a “reasonable” dinner? Yeah. I’m going to need something. And I am probably going to need something quick, convenient, and loaded with carbs. If there is cake around the house, that’s what I’m hitting. But if I go to bed at 9:30 or 10:00? I’m avoiding several hundred calories. And lots of sugar.

When I was diligently counting points on Weight Watchers, I always went to bed when my points ran out. Less chance of getting hungry again and not being able to do anything about it. Sometimes that put me in bed at 7:30 but, whatever – it worked.

Eight hours of sleep during the week sometimes seems impossible – but if you shoot for at least six, you should get the same benefit. And make it up on the weekends. Not much in life better than an afternoon nap, is there?