Our fab PR Girl Emily and I were having a conversation last week and I told her that I felt that even though I had been going to the gym almost every day and eating very healthy I didn’t feel like I was loosing any weight. Emily mentioned that it most definitely had to do with the fact that I don’t sleep enough.

The NY Times published a story, “Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain.” In which doctors stated, “We found that when people weren’t getting enough sleep they overate carbohydrates. They ate more food, and when they ate food also changed. They ate a smaller breakfast and they ate a lot more after dinner.”

“‘Metabolically, lack of sleep aged fat cells about 20 years,’ said Matthew Brady, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and the senior author on the study.

Dr. Brady said that while better sleep would not solve the obesity problem, paying more attention to sleep habits could help individuals better manage their weight.

In the future he hopes to study whether a focus on better sleep could improve the health of people in middle age who are overweight or prediabetic.

‘Telling someone they need to sleep more as a way to improve their metabolic health, we think would be more palatable,’ said Dr. Brady. ‘We think sleep is very under appreciated.'”

Image and quotes via NY Times