The Overnight Diet: Can You Lose Weight While You Sleep? | Part II
We’re continuing our exploration of the Overnight Diet, based on a book of the same name. Can you really lose weight while you sleep? Can you do it the way this book says you can?
Weight and Sleep
Keith Ayoob of Albert Einstein College of Medicine told ABC News that if you do lose two pounds in the first night, “It won’t be fat. It’ll be mostly water. Because there’s no how, no way you’re going to lose two pounds of body fat overnight.”
Ayoob continued, “In order to lose two pounds of body fat overnight you’d have to burn up about six or seven thousand calories” – and if vigorous exercise doesn’t burn those kinds of calories, snoozing certainly doesn’t. Helping your body manage water effectively is one key to healthy weight loss, and quality sleep helps. But burning noticeable amounts of body fat while sleeping isn’t really in the cards.
Sleep and Weight
David Rapoport, MD, of the Sleep Medicine Program at the New York University School of Medicine, told WebMD that many hormones are affected by quantity and quality of sleep – and that some of those hormones regulate hunger.
The hormones leptin and ghrelin are both affected by sleep, and both appear to regulate weight. I’ve explored the link between obesity and sleep deprivation on the blog in a previous post, and new research on these hormones suggests that people who sleep less eat more and make poorer food choices. One study found that people who slept less ate an average of 549 more calories daily during the course of the study – that’s enough to make a significant difference in weight over time.
So Does It Work?
Getting a good night’s sleep is always sound advice. Good sleep will help you regulate hunger and make better choices about food – among other things. And a high-protein, low carb diet can help you take off the weight… though it’s imperative that you eat plenty of fruits and veggies – especially leafy greens – if you want to undertake a high protein diet safely. Just munching on meat and cheese all day won’t cut it.
If you want the Overnight Diet to help you knock off two pounds of body fat right off the bat and kick all that extra weight to the curb with no exercise and no health consequences, you’re going to have to think again. If you see this diet for what it is – sound advice cloaked in sensationalism – you’ll probably be satisfied.
Author Bio: +Michelle Gordon is a sleep expert who researches and writes about sleep and health, and is an online publisher for the latex mattress specialist Latexmattress.org.