Less sleep= more eat?

[Smiley24_7]

Last night my sister was horribly sick with the stomach flu (strangely she caught it in the summer when it is 115 degrees outside lol) and I was by her side all night (Im the only one in the hosue who trusts my immune system lol). Well needless to say I only recieved around five hours of sleep. Being a teengaer I need easily around 8 1/2- 10 hours of sleep and have been trying my best to maintain that. Well I noticed that my apetie increased majorly and I've eaten mroe this morning than usual. I was wondering if there was a link between sleep deprivation and increased apetite. I looekd it up and there were thousands of articles saying "yes". This is the best One I could find.


CBS-Sleep More, Eat Less (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/09/health/webmd/main654548.shtml)


So make sure to get the amount of sleep you feel your body needs. I wish I could tell that to my mom who averages about 5 hours but you can tell needs more :D .

[dreamrawalwz]

Yes, unfortunately. Less than 6 hours of sleep 1) slows metabolism, and 2) increases appitite...double whammy :(

[faith4u]

Yep, I notice that too. Right now I am nursing a baby that still gets up every few hours to eat (almost 7 months old). He also gets up early. If he does sleep in I get up to exercise early anyways.

[juliebove]

Yes! This is something I noticed when my daughter was very young. And I've read in childcare books that this is true. Hunger is one of the first things a baby notices. Something is wrong. They don't feel good. They get fed. They feel better. So before they begin to sort out their other bodily functions, they often turn to food.

For many years, mere minutes before I was going to put her to bed (and before she learned to tell time) she'd start asking for food. I'd tell her that she didn't need food, she needed sleep. "But I'm HUNGRY!", she'd protest. It took me a long time to get her to realize that she didn't need that food. She needed to go to sleep.

We can also use sleep as a substitute for food. Some years ago, I put myself on a very strict diet of 1,000 calories per day. I was also doing a ton of exercise. I was losing weight, but I was constantly hungry and cranky. I finally learned that the only way I could make it was to go to bed super early. If I did that, I could ignore the hunger pangs. Although I've read that you should never go to bed hungry because you won't sleep well, this didn't seem to hold true for me. Once asleep, I'd forget about the hunger until breakfast. I wouldn't recommend this diet for anyone. It didn't work in the long haul. I never quite attained my goal weight. I did manage to keep the weight off for two years, but then I put it all back on and then some.

I believe we really should listen to our bodies. Of course there will be times when we can't do what it is we need to do. Like when someone is sick and we need to take care of them. And other emergency situations. But normally we function best if we do what our bodies are telling us to do.