Can Sleeping Enough Make You Skinny?

As if all these hormonal issues from lack of sleep weren’t enough of an issue, it’s also been shown in research that lack of sleep also causes your brain to be less resistant to the temptation of junk foods, excess calorie intake and foods you know you shouldn’t eat. One study published in Nature Communications found that a single night of sleep deprivation is enough to impair activity in a section of your frontal lobe that controls food-related decision-making, which is one reason why it’s so much easier to mow through an entire bar of chocolate, box of French fries or carton of ice cream when you’re sleep deprived. When sleep deprived, you also have increased activity in the amygdala, a reward region of your brain that can make you crave high-calorie or very fatty and salty foods. When you get enough sleep, you can often fight off these desire, but another area of your brain – a section called your “insular cortex” gets desensitized due to sleep deprivation, and this means you have more trouble fighting the urges to eat highly rewarding foods. In a nutshell, when sleep deprived, you simply don’t have the mental clarity to make complex decisions with regards to the foods you eat or the foods you want to avoid.