21/06/2022
For starters, lack of sleep can cause you to be hungrier for longerTrusted Source, and to eat more calories than your body needs, especially from calorie- and carb-dense foods. That can lead to weight gain.
Fatigue is another problem caused by poor sleep quality. If you don’t get enough sleep, you probably won’t have as much energy to move around and exercise. If you have lower mobility, that can also keep you from exercising as much as you’d like.
Lack of sleep affects everybody but can particularly impact adolescents’Trusted Source tendency to gain weight. Adolescence is a crucial time for brain growth and development, and young adults need plenty of good quality sleep to support it.
Not getting enough sleep can adversely affect the growth of the brain region called the hypothalamus, which regulates appetite and energy expenditure.
In a 2019 studyTrusted Source on adolescents with obesity, the faster subjects gained weight, the more likely they were to develop severe obstructive sleep apnea and experience reduced quality and duration of sleep. Your appetite can also become dysregulatedTrusted Source because of sleep-related changes to your hormone levels, especially the hormones leptin and ghrelin.
Leptin is the hormone that allows you to feel full when you’ve eaten enough. Those with obesity already have high levels of leptin in their body. It’s been found that people with sleep apnea can also have up to 50 percentTrusted Source more of this hormone compared to those who don’t have sleep apnea.
That’s a problem because if your body makes too much leptin for too long, it can become resistant to it, which prevents you from feeling satisfied after eating.
At the same time, your ghrelin levels may be elevated due to obesity or lack of sleep. This hormone makes you feel hungry, also leading to excessive calorie intake.
Because you’re often very hungry and rarely feel full after eating, you may eat too much and store the excess calories as fat.