Nighttime Weight Loss

Losing weight while you sleep seems too good to be true. Yet, it is just about the easiest and simplest weight loss tip there could be. Get enough sleep, and lose weight. Lose sleep, and gain weight. This amazing discovery has been corroborated by a study at the University of Chicago. Researchers compared food intake between a group of people who slept only 5½ hours one night, and 8½ another. On the sleepy day, they ate 221 more calories, including more sugar, just to "wake up." This study showed one reason people who lose sleep gain weight, but there are many more.

• Time to sleep and lose weight.

Why You Lose While You Sleep

• Dr. Michael J. Breus, author of "Beauty Sleep," explains that growth hormone is secreted during deep sleep. That is the hormone that tells your body to break down fat for fuel. If your body is deprived of deep sleep and when extra calories are stored as fat the limited amount of growth hormone secreted is not enough to break the fat down. "So your body takes a shortcut and packs it away in your butt, thighs, belly---wherever you tend to put on weight," Breus says.

Why You Eat More When You Lose Sleep

• People naturally eat more food when they are sleep-deprived and they eat junkier food. They need energy, so they crave simple carbohydrates that break down fast for a quick energy fix. That is because sleep deprivation produces ghrelin, a hormone that makes you want to eat more and causes a drop in leptin, the hormone that tells you to stop eating because you're full, according to Dr. Breus. He is clinical director of the Sleep Division at Southwest Spine & Sport in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Getting Enough Sleep to Lose Weight

• What is "enough sleep?" It is at least 7½ hours per night, and possibly more. Women in the Chicago study who slept less than 7½ hours did not lose weight. To get the right amount of sleep, back time from when you have to be up. If you want to wake by 7 a.m, you need to be asleep by at least 11:30 p.m, so start your bedtime routine around 10 or 10:30. If you still feel tired the next day, increase your sleep by 15-minute increments until you determine how much sleep you need. On weekends, even if you go to bed later, sleep in long enough to get your 7½ hours, or even longer.

Higher Body Fat in the Sleepless

• About 1,000 volunteers recorded the hours they slept each night in a joint project between Stanford and the University of Wisconsin. The study results were clear: Those who slept less than eight hours a night had out-of-whack hormones, specifically lower levels of leptin and higher ghrelin levels. They also had higher body fat levels. And if that were not conclusive enough, it was also found that body fat levels were in direct ratio to sleep patterns. In other words, the ones who weighed the most slept the least.

Metabolism Increases During Sleep

• Even though we seem to be doing less while asleep than awake, our brains are actually very busy during rapid eye movement. Out of our total sleep time, 25 percent is spent in REM. During REM, the brain's metabolic rate is higher than when awake and body temperature increases. This may cause more calories to be burned, based on a study conducted in 2009 by Dr. Walter Moraes of Universidad Federal Sao Paolo, Brazil. His findings demonstrated that people lose three times more weight while asleep than they do when lying in bed.