Not Too Much & Not Too Little
After you eat Thanksgiving dinner, you may find yourself getting sleepy, because turkey contains a natural sleep-inducing amino acid called tryptophan. This is GOOD because cutting back on sleep reduces the benefits of dieting BUT sleeping too much may cause you to die younger. When dieters in a new study got a full night’s sleep, they lost the same amount of weight as when they slept less. When dieters got adequate sleep, however, more than half of the weight they lost was fat. When they cut back on their sleep, only one-fourth of their weight loss came from fat. They also felt hungrier. When sleep was restricted, dieters produced higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger and reduces energy expenditure.read more