Anyone else with a night waker had trouble losing weight?

[~Kaz~]

I've been reading up on sleep deprivation cause it's been pretty constant in my world the past 16 months and apparently one of the side effects can be inability to lose weight (or a great deal of difficulty at least). It has something to do with neurotransmitters and hormones that are released when sleeping for appropriate periods of time.

Just wondering what people think of this. Does it sound plausible? Has anyone else felt that their sleep deprivation was sabotaging their weight loss efforts? Or should I just suck it up and try harder? LOL!

[appletree]

Absolutely! This is 100% correct, you need your sleep

I studied this briefly at uni as part of a sleep unit in psychology and i believe it is true, though i may have been influenced by my DD waking every 40 mins during this particular part of the course so it had a lot of relevance...

[~Kaz~]

my DD waking every 40 mins

Oh wow, that's full on The most frequent we get here is 1.5 to 2 hourly but he's up for hours at each wake up sometimes too.

So is there any way I can counteract this? Aside from him sleeping through which I don't seem to be able to influence.

[Mr Squidipa]

yes sleep is very important for weight loss you should try to get about 8 hours sleep that is when you actually lose the weight i beleive plus it gives your body good recovery for the next day

[~Kaz~]

Does it have to be 8 hours straight or can it be little chunks that add up to a total of 8 hours? Ta.

[appletree]

I think it is 8 solid hours sorry!

Do you co-sleep? Poor thing with the long waking hours! DD was great at going back to sleep again quite quickly once i had given her some (.)(.)

I would just wait it out, they aren't like this forever and you will eventually get some more sleep. And then you have another one, and it all starts again...

[AliBaby]

Definitely true.

I did Exercise science at uni for a year before i changed degrees and we looked at this.

-Lack of sleep causes the release of more cortisol than the body needs (stress hormone) and then makes you more hungry.
-It changes your Basal metabolic rate (number of calories burnt while resting)
-It makes it harder to metabolise carbohydrates and causes high blood levels of glucose, which leads to higher insulin levels and greater body-fat storage.

There are other things to but I just cant remember.

I think if you are following a healthy diet and exercising there is not a lot more that you can do if you arent getting enough sleep. Lets just hope DS learns to love sleep!