What Gives? Is LESS Sleep Better?

Sleep has a direct relation to how well our bodies burn fat.

In the study, scientists divided a sample group into two sections. One was to sleep less than 6 hours a night, while the other was told to sleep more than six hours a night.

The results were astounding.

They expected to see a difference in the health of the two groups. And, of course, they expected that the group getting fewer hours of sleep would be less healthy. All of this turned out to be true.

But what was really shocking were the LONG-TERM effects of lack of sleep in our bodies. Not only did the sleepless group suffer from a lower capacity to burn fat, the study showed a change at the genetic level in how their bodies processed fat.

That means that not sleeping can harm us in the short term, as well as making it more likely we will be overweight in the future.

Burning Fat in Your Sleep

Here’s something you may not know: we burn most of our fat in our sleep.

That’s right. It seems strange since it’s the period when we are most inactive. But, it’s true.

While we sleep, our bodies are doing all kinds of maintenance work. We may lose consciousness, but our bodies are working overtime. As they do, they burn fat and process it.

That means that the less we sleep, the less fat our bodies burn.

How Sleep Impacts Weight Loss

There are a variety of reasons that sleep affects our weight loss. As mentioned above, we burn fat while we sleep. But its more than that.

When we lack sleep, our bodies go into emergency mode. They think that we are in danger, so they are more likely to hang onto fat and calories. Your body wants to keep you safe, but it makes you fat.

According a study from 2010, the amount of sleep we get determines how much fat we burn.

In the study, when dieters got a full night’s sleep, the amount of fat they burned was about the same as when they got less than adequate sleep. The big difference was in the amount of FAT burned.

For the group who got enough sleep, up to HALF of their weight loss was fat. In the group who didn’t get enough sleep, only ¼ of the weight they loss was fat. That makes a big difference, especially over the long term.

What's the Ideal Number?

But how much sleep is ideal?

Here’s where it gets a little bit tricky. We know for certain that getting less than six hours of sleep is harmful to our health and makes us gain weight. Exactly how much sleep is ideal isn’t quite as clear.

According to most studies, seven hours a day appears to be ideal. The American Cancer Society found that people who slept an average of seven hours a day lived the longest of any group. Sleeping for five, six, or eight hours a day seems to have similar results.

Oversleeping, or sleeping about ten hours a day, had a surprisingly bad outcome. The over sleepers had worse lifespans than even those who got less than five hours of sleep.

You’ll have to feel out what’s best for you but aim for seven hours a night for your best health.