Less Sleep = Less Satiation
For the next several weeks, we will be exploring the factors that can affect our ability to stabilize our moods, throw off our appetite, and increase the likelihood of reaching for food for non-physical hunger reasons.
We will explore sleep, stress, impaired gut function, skipping meals, quality of food, and thirst.
Today we are going to start with sleep. You won't often find me talking about calories very much as how much nourishment your body needs is unique to you. Studies have found though that when we get less than 7 hours of sleep, we will consume 300 or more extra calories the next day. Not getting enough sleep can affect our hunger and fullness cues, raise certain lipids in our blood making food feel more enjoyable, and we are more likely to reach for high carbohydrate foods at night to make ourselves sleepy. A study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that adults that slept around 90 minutes more than their normal sleep time, which was under 7 hours, experienced a 14% drop in appetite and a 62% decline in desire for processed foods.
This is a great reminder that often when it comes to hunger, willpower has nothing to do with overpowering our appetite. Sometimes there are things in our routine that are affecting our ability to accurately hear our hunger and fullness cues. You are not weak and there is nothing wrong with you if you're feeling like you're struggling with feeling full. There are so many factors affecting your sense of hunger and fullness. When we get less than 7 hours of sleep, brain function decreases that can affect our decision-making process, we can be more forgetful, our prefrontal cortex shrinks, making us moody, irritable, and irrational also contributing to just saying forget everything and reaching for food that is within close reach.
So how do we shift a pattern of overeating when we have experienced a restless night? And what would cultivate a more restful night of sleep?
1. Foster Awareness: First, reminding yourself throughout the day that you got less sleep than you potentially needed can cultivate awareness of what is happening in your body that day. I often teach to trust hunger and fullness cues. On days with less than 7 hours of sleep, you will want to bring in more curiosity around what your body might be telling you.
2. Food Choices: To support with blood sugar stabilization during days with less sleep, consuming meals higher in quality protein and fat can be supportive to feel grounded. Drink lots of water to feel more energized instead of too much coffee that might leave you feeling wired but tired.
3. Create a bedtime routine: If you have been getting less than 7 hours of sleep regularly, this can be a great time to explore what your bedtime routine is like. 1-2 hours before you need to get into bed to sleep to get your 7-8 hours, turn off all electronics. Read a book, listen to some music, take a bath, create some artwork, journal, do whatever supports you with relaxing and readying your body for sleep.
4. Drink some magnesium: Magnesium plays a role in supporting deep, restorative sleep by maintaining healthy levels of GABA, a neurotransmitter that promotes sleep. There are many powdered magnesium supplements, like Natural Calm, that you can drink a glass of magnesium before bed.
5. Cultivate a satiating sleep environment: What is your bedroom like? Is it cluttered? Do you get excited to go in there to rest? Do you love your sheets? Your comforter? Your pillow? Is your bedroom dark and cool or full of light and too hot? Just as our eating environment can affect how we digest and assimilate our food, our sleeping environment can affect our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. Do a bedroom assessment and explore what might be possible to enhance the satiation of your sleeping environment. This could be as small as turning down the temperature of your bedroom at night or as big as buying new bedding and pillows.
There was a time in my 20's I had a hard time falling asleep. Before I went to bed, I would tell myself that I was safe and I could sleep as long as I wanted. It was incredibly effective to shift what my mind was focusing on before I fell asleep and cultivated an inner environment in my body of relaxation.
You can pick and choose 1-2 of these suggestions and notice when you sleep 7-8 hours how your relationship with food shifts and changes naturally.