03/02/2020
How to Get a Smaller Waist with 5 Simple Lifestyle Tweaks
Sleep is key for bulletproofing your willpower against cravings and priming your body for burning calories. The waistlines of people who slept six hours a night were about three-quarters of an inch larger than those who got eight hours, new research from the University of Leeds in England reports. Why? After sleep loss, there is increased activity in brain regions associated with pleasure and reward in response to food, previous research has shown, and this may lead to more impulsive eating habits, explains study author Gregory Potter, Ph.D.
Plus, after just one night of lousy sleep (less than four hours), people had a reduced sensitivity to insulin, according to findings by Christian Benedict, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Uppsala University in Sweden. Usually, once insulin reaches the brain, it boosts satiety, so the brain's impaired sensitivity to insulin could promote weight gain, he says.
To maximize those eight hours you get, have a consistent bedtime and wake time, says Brandy M. Roane, Ph.D., a certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist. If you sleep and/or wake up at different times, your body's master clock (aka circadian clock) will communicate that update to "peripheral" clocks within the body that control things like the metabolic system. The problem is, these peripheral clocks take two to three days to sync to your master clock. This starts affecting your metabolism, like jet lag, Roane says, decreasing levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, and promoting insulin resistance, similar to what occurs with sleep loss.
