5 Ways Poor Quality Sleep Affects What You Eat (and What to do About it):
This is a Guest Post by Brittany Andrejcin,
Holistic Nutritional Practitioner, Sleep Expert and Founder of Firm Ground Nutrition
We all know sleep is important for your overall health and well being. I’m sure you can notice how different you feel after an amazing night of sleep, compared to a not so great one.
But did you also know the quality of sleep can impact what our body craves, desires, and feels satisfied by when it comes to food? I’m going to share what actually happens with the way we engage with food when our sleep is compromised, as well as what you can do to support yourself and your body’s natural ability to self-regulate around food.
5 Ways Poor Quality Sleep Affects What You Eat:
1. It Makes You Crave Comfort Food
Sleep loss will put your stress response (also known as “fight or flight”) into overdrive. Chronic stress also happens to be one of the top triggers of insomnia, so you can see how this can quickly become a vicious cycle. What is the natural response when we are in a place of stress or discomfort? Comfort, often through food. Seeking comfort through food is natural and normal but what you want to be aware of is when you’re using comfort food as a crutch to get through something else (such as lack of sleep).
What To Do? Instead of beating yourself up for turning to comfort food, consider finding ways to manage your stress. A great go-to option is breathwork. Slowing down with intentional, deep breathing can shift you from a state of stress to relaxation.
2. It Increases Your Food Cravings
Your blood sugar has a cyclical relationship with the quality of sleep you achieve. If you’re not getting enough sleep, your body has a difficult time regulating your blood sugar levels. Why does this matter? Many food cravings and desires stem from imbalanced blood sugar, easily leading to what’s commonly referred to as “the blood sugar rollercoaster”: a repetitive cycle of blood sugar dips and spikes.
Intuitively, when our blood sugar dips lower than ideal, the body will crave foods that are carbohydrate or sugar-rich because they can be broken down easily to help raise blood sugar levels, and thus, energy levels. Unfortunately, blood sugar that is too high or too low can be detrimental to the quality of sleep you get the following night.
What to do? Aim for 8 hours of quality sleep and focus on getting a balanced variety of macronutrients (protein, fat, fibre, carbohydrates) through your meals and snacks to avoid hopping on the blood sugar rollercoaster, especially before bed.
3. You Never Feel Satisfied After Eating
Sleep deprivation or loss impacts the appetite-regulating hormones, ghrelin, and leptin. Ghrelin triggers a strong sensation of hunger, while Leptin signals the feeling of being satisfied and full.
With too little sleep, studies found increased levels of ghrelin and decreased concentrations of leptin. What does this mean? It means after nights of poor sleep, you will naturally crave more but will have a harder time feeling satisfied, no matter what you eat.
Occasional bouts of poor sleep inevitably happen to us all. Fortunately, there are many factors that contribute to a great sleep that can be easily implemented.
What to do? Check in with yourself. What does your body need at this moment? Honour your body’s needs in all ways: eat intuitively, and be intentional about getting quality sleep.
4. It Interferes With The Ability To Eat Intuitively
Living in a state of chronic stress triggers the release of excess cortisol, popularly known as your stress hormone
Fun Fact: If you often wake up between 1-3am every night, you can thank the hormone, cortisol, for that!
Excess amount of circulating cortisol has negative effects on the gut microbiome, promoting “bad bacteria” to take over, leaving you with a compromised ability to properly break down and absorb the foods and nutrients you are consuming. You can imagine then, how difficult it will be to navigate intuitive eating and focusing on foods that make you feel good, when you’re experiencing digestive upset and negative symptoms associated with poor gut health.
What to do? Show your gut some love by including prebiotic and probiotic foods (like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi and tempeh), invest in a high quality probiotic, practice stress release, and of course, prioritize catching your zZz’s!
5. It Interferes with Food Decisions and Falsely Makes Certain Foods More Desirable
In a study that tested how the brain reacts to food following a stretch of shortened sleep, the part of our brain responsible for making sound judgement and decision making (the pre-frontal cortex) had quieted its activity due to inadequate sleep. Instead, the more biological, primal structures of the brain that drive survival motivation and desire were heightened.
Certain foods became far more desirable for the participants who experienced sleep deprivation, compared to those who got a full 8.5-hour sleep. Your body interprets sleep loss as a threat to your survival. Your body is doing this as an act of love to literally keep you alive, preparing calorically for perceived difficult times ahead.
What to do? Practice habits that support high-quality sleep (sleeping with black out blinds, an eye mask, avoiding technology before bed) and prioritize it like you would other non-negotiable activities in your daily life.
As you embark on your journey of intuitive eating and learn to listen to what your body is communicating with you, recognize there are many factors at play when it comes to your body’s hunger signals, cravings, and satiety.
Your desire to eat more on certain days, or trying to satisfy cravings, is not simply a lack of willpower. Your body is intuitive and always communicating with you. What is it asking for? Perhaps, if you take time to listen, you may realize your body is asking for a little more time between the sheets.
Learn more about Brittany Andrejcin and start getting the sleep of your dreams here.