How To Lose Weight While Sleeping

Last Update:

The global obesity crisis has accelerated the search for affordable and effective weight loss treatments. As a result, the market is continuously flooded with new diet trends, some of which promise to help you lose weight while you sleep.

This article explores different ways to help you shed extra pounds while sleeping.

How To Lose Weight While Sleeping 1

1. Try Your Sleep Switch

Eat lean meat instead of fatty meat. For example, try to add lamb to your menu instead of counting sheep! Or even better, some turkey. That is because Tryptophan is an amino acid that is found in most meats and has been shown to make people sleep better.

Lose Weight While Sleeping

In a study of “mild” insomniacs that was published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, just 1/4 g, which is about what you’d find in three ounces of lean turkey meat, or skinless chicken drumstick was enough to significantly increase the number of hours of deep sleep. And that can make it easy to lose weight.

Experts suggest that any food with tryptophan in it, like eggs, fish, lentils nuts, and, chicken can help bring on sleepyhead syndrome. If you’re the type that can’t get to sleep unless you’ve eaten, try snacking on some nuts, some butter, an avocado, or any other healthy source of fat.

2. Eat Whole Grains During Lunch

You probably already know it’s not a good idea to eat a big meal, have caffeine or alcohol, or even drink any of those things within three hours of bedtime, but you might not know that complex carbs are better consumed at lunch than in the evening.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 1

It is essential to know that serotonin comes from complex carbs found in whole grains. During stage 3 Rapid eye movement sleep, serotonin is changed into melatonin. You can get a good night’s sleep without eating carbs right before bedtime; simply consume them throughout the day.

Also, experts advise that about 20 grams of insoluble fiber are sufficient to help you sleep. Therefore, try to eat 20 g of insoluble food fiber daily, and you’ll make sure your body can convert enough serotonin to help you sleep well.

3. Lower The Temperature

If you sleep in a cooler room, you might burn more calories and lose weight while you’re asleep. A study published in the journal Diabetes found that people sleeping in cool rooms up to “66 degrees” for a month had 42 percent more brown fat, which burns calories, and they might be able to metabolize fat up by 10 percent.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 2

Even better, they became more sensitive to insulin, which could make them less likely to get type 2 diabetes.

It may be that in cold environments; the body has to work harder to maintain an ideal core temperature due to “metabolic signaling” between brown-fat tissue and skeletal muscle. These benefits could be even better if you slept naked, and small changes to your diet can help you lose weight.

4. Reduce Your Intake Of Cocktails

During REM sleep, your body burns the most calories at night. However, if you have a few drinks too many before bed, your liver will have to work overtime to metabolize the alcohol, and you won’t get as much REM sleep. And that’s only one of the problems.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 3

Additionally, the brain, like the rest of the body, prefers to burn carbohydrates, and alcohol is essentially made from fermented sugars. Guess what happens to your body’s alcohol sugars? They make it difficult for the body to convert fat cells into ketones, which would otherwise aid in fat-burning, and they also occupy the liver, which must now detox the alcohol.

Additionally, the breakdown products of alcohol are heavy in calories. A glass of wine with dinner is acceptable, but you should not drink alcohol a few hours before bedtime.

5. Dine On Little Suppers

Eating a heavy dinner prevents your body from detoxing and recharging, as it must work to process the food instead. Having this problem magnified after a carbohydrate-heavy meal is frustrating. When we eat carbs, our blood sugar levels rise, and insulin is secreted to help move the sugar from our blood into our cells to be used as fuel.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 4

Since we are going to bed soon, any excess calories won’t be used and will be stored as fat. Insulin causes a rise in blood sugar levels, inhibits fat breakdown, encourages fat storage, and communicates with the body’s internal clock, which controls proper sleep cycles.

Experts advocate swapping out starchy foods for fiber-rich plant-based foods that aid digestion rather than making the body does work as it’s getting ready to shut down for the night.  Unsure of what else to consume? Incorporate some fat-burning dishes into your (early) meal.

6. Get exposure to light early in the day

Evening light exposure inhibits the generation of melatonin, which can make it easy for our bodies to gain weight. But light exposure is not entirely detrimental to sleep and weight. In contrast, exposure to light early in the day helps to reinforce our daily, 24-hour circadian rhythms, in part by increasing the daily, normal drop of melatonin.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 5

When melatonin levels decrease, you become more aware and prepared for physical activity. That makes you more energized and more likely to burn more calories during the day.

In addition, the morning light transmits powerful signals to the brain that maintain your daily biorhythms in line. These circadian biorhythms exert considerable influence over sleep-wake cycles. So, when you are just beginning your day, you may not be thinking about your next night’s sleep.

However, by reinforcing circadian rhythms, this early-day light exposure can have a direct impact on how well you sleep at night; and a good night’s sleep makes it simpler to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.

Moreover, our biorhythms influence virtually every aspect of our everyday physiology, from metabolism digestion, and hormone production, including the hormones that regulate appetite and satiety.

7. Remove all electronics from your bedroom

If you want to lose weight overnight, avoid scrolling through your Facebook feed before you fall asleep. According to studies, blue light, which is released by smartphones, tablets, and even “energy-efficient lighting” (LEDs), prevents the formation of the hormone melatonin, which might decrease your metabolism.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 6

Additionally, blue-light exposure suppresses melatonin production two times as long as natural light and shifts circadian rhythms double as much. According to a study from Northwestern University, exposure to blue light at night increases Insulin resistance and hunger and can lead to increased body fat, weight gain, and an increased chance of developing diabetes.

8. Use intermittent fasting to enhance fat loss

There has been a great deal of excitement “surrounding intermittent fasting”, and it appears that this may be warranted. These periods of reduced eating, most of which occur while you sleep, can maintain a healthy metabolism.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 7

“Intermittent fasting diets” allow us to commence the cell-repairing process and make fat readily available for combustion as fuel.  Fasting increases “human growth hormone levels”, allowing for muscle production and fat consumption.

However, a “full-fledged fasting diet” may be too much for the body and difficult to adhere to for certain individuals, so you can follow some basic principles of dieting. For instance, you can carve yourself a roughly 12-hour “no-food window at night” — the popular 12:12 schedule — without having the feeling like you’re starving yourself. There are fifty additional techniques to lose weight without exercising.

9. Turn off the TV

Did you know that people who are thin watch less TV? A recent review of studies published in JAMA found that the chances of getting diabetes, heart disease, or dying early all went up by 20, 15, and 13% for every two hours spent watching TV.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 8

Scientists are still trying to figure out why sitting is so bad for health, but one obvious and partial explanation is that the “less we move, the less fuel we need”. The extra blood sugar enters the bloodstream and increases the risk of diabetes and other health problems related to being overweight.

10. Go to sleep in total darkness

You can also think about getting blackout curtains or coverings for your bedroom in addition to turning off electronics. Your body produces melatonin.

Lose Weight While Sleeping 9

In response to the dwindling light of day, which induces drowsiness and aids in the maintenance of normal circadian rhythms. Indoor lighting and even low-level lighting (such as streetlights) have been found in studies to prevent the body from producing melatonin, which has been linked to weight gain.

According to research in the Journal of Pineal Research, this may also prevent the development of fat-burning brown fat. Melatonin plays a crucial role in regulating our bodies’ metabolism, and increasing melatonin has been proven to increase brown fat… it can also lower “fasting insulin levels” and “blood lipid levels” in some cases. Even though any weight loss would probably be small. it’s worth a shot! 

References

1. Hartmann E, Spinweber CL. Sleep induced by L-tryptophan. Effect of dosages within the normal dietary intake. J Nerv Ment Dis. 1979 Aug;167(8):497-9. PMID: 469515.

2. Paul Lee, Sheila Smith, Joyce Linderman, Amber B. Courville, Robert J. Brychta, William Dieckmann, Charlotte D. Werner, Kong Y. Chen, Francesco S. Celi; Temperature-Acclimated Brown Adipose Tissue Modulates Insulin Sensitivity in Humans. Diabetes 1 November 2014; 63 (11): 3686–3698. https://doi.org/10.2337/db14-0513.

3. Bonmati-Carrion, M. A., Arguelles-Prieto, R., Martinez-Madrid, M. J., Reiter, R., Hardeland, R., Rol, M. A., & Madrid, J. A. (2014). They are protecting the melatonin rhythm through circadian healthy light exposure. International journal of molecular sciences, 15(12), 23448–23500. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms151223448.

4. https://aasm.org/study-links-evening-blue-light-exposure-to-increased-hunger/

5. Grøntved, A., & Hu, F. B. (2011). Television viewing and risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis. JAMA, 305(23), 2448–2455. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2011.812

6. Fernández Vázquez, G, Reiter, RJ, Agil, A. Melatonin increases brown adipose tissue mass and function in Zücker diabetic fatty rats: implications for obesity control. J Pineal Res. 2018; 64:e12472. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpi.12472

Related Articles:

Photo of author
AUTHOR
I am Dr. Aniqa Agha graduate from King Edward Medical University. I did major in Physical therapy. I am also a professional content writer for over four years experience in content writing. During these years, i have written numerous research articles, health blog posts.