Surprised?
Took a retake on the title? Yes, you got that right. You can absolutely lose calories when asleep. But of course, that doesn’t mean you sleep your weight off.
Let’s first understand what calories are. A calorie is a measure of energy spend and energy stored. Calories are found in all food and drinks we consume daily. These are converted into energy by our metabolism thereby allowing us to function properly.
However, when one speaks of calories, we automatically associate it to weight loss and fitness during our waking hours. But, what happens when we are asleep?
What Is the relationship between sleep and weight loss?
More than you could possibly imagine. Apart from having the right diet and workout routine in place, it’s so important to give your body deep rest for cells and muscles to repair. Calories burned during the day through exercise and other activities push our body to relax and rest faster too.
Calories burned during sleep, however, are used to maintain natural and imperative functions in the body like monitoring/maintaining your body temperature, renewal of cells, pumping blood etc.
Some factors that help to burn calories during sleep include:
- Sleep hours– how long you sleep matters. Aim for seven to nine hours for metabolism to function properly. A person burns calories during sleep as well.
- Weight – overweight people burn more calories asleep, just as during the day time,
- Metabolism –higher the metabolism during the day, more the calories you burn while sleeping as energy needs to be restored.
- Temperature – cool environments mean that the body will use more calories to keep warm
Wakefit, a leading manufacturer of mattresses, understand the above and have designed their products to encourage deep sleep. Options like memory foam as mattress material really help in mimicking your posture in bed and controlling temperature too making sleep experience an absolute delight.
How can one lose calories sleeping?
Food eaten in the evenings is digested in the exact same way as it would during the day. This means your body continues to work hard to digest all through the night as well. Eating the right kind of food and quantity will ensure an undisturbed sleep. If you ate a large fatty or spicy meal just before bedtime, you might just be up before you know it with heartburn.
Similarly, health conditions such as asthma or GERD can be worsened by eating too much before bedtime.
All the more reason for you to have an early dinner and perhaps a small healthy snack just before bedtime. This will boost your metabolism and keep your blood sugar stable for the night. This also allows for glucagon (the secret hormone that burns fat) to get to business while you are in deep sleep. Limiting the intake of excess food before bedtime gives you a good night’s sleep. Having a full night sleep also prevents you from sleep debts or deprivation keeping you fresh for the day.
Sleep deprivation can lead to a decrease of leptin, a hormone, involved in the regulation of appetite and metabolism. To put it simple, it’s the chemical that instructs your brain on when it’s full when to burn calories for energy etc. However, when you don’t get enough sleep, you end up with a dip in Leptin in the day. This is when you sneak in that sugar heavy coffee with 2 doughnuts. You constantly feel hungry craving unwanted food for energy boosts. In other words, you load calories!
Invest in mattress and pillow online from manufacturers like Wakefit, to avoid sleep deprivation that in turn helps you lose weight.
