Between longer evenings and “just one more episode” series, many are putting off bedtime. However, several studies show that this habit promotes weight gain and directly ruins your slimming efforts.
With the sunny days returning, research on diets, the “summer body” and light recipes starts again like every year. Some people start exercising again, others watch what they eat a little more. However, many continue to neglect a completely different element: bedtime. Because when it comes to silhouette, the body doesn’t just look at what’s on the plate. He also looks at what time it is when we finally turn off Netflix.
Indeed, for several years, numerous studies have established a link between late bedtimes and weight gain, particularly around the stomach. A study conducted by Harvard Medical School, for example, shows that people who go to bed later are more likely to have a high body mass index and a larger waist circumference. The more the schedules drift into the night, the more the risk increases. However, researchers remain cautious: going to bed late obviously does not make you gain weight on its own. But the phenomenon is frequent enough to be of great interest to sleep and nutrition specialists.
The problem is that going to bed late completely disrupts the mechanisms that control hunger and fat storage. When the sleep pattern goes in all directions, the body produces more ghrelin, the hormone that stimulates appetite, and less leptin, the one that normally indicates that we have eaten enough. Result: snacking desires explode. And not for an apple or a natural yogurt. In general, at 1 a.m., the brain calls for fat, sugar and very comforting calories. In this context, studies are starting to observe more obvious weight gain in people who go to bed after midnight.
Note that lack of sleep also affects cortisol, the stress hormone. When it stays high for too long, the body stores more fat, especially around the abdomen. It is exactly this fat that many seek to lose before summer and which often hangs on despite their efforts. Specialists also explain that nights that are too short or too late make it difficult to lose weight, even when the diet is generally correct. You can be careful all day long and ruin some of your efforts with completely offbeat sleep habits.
Specialists therefore advise keeping a fairly regular sleep schedule, especially when the goal is to lose weight or avoid gaining weight. The ideal is to sleep 7 to 8 hours a night and eat dinner early enough to avoid long evenings that end with a snack “because you were just feeling peckish”.
