A Dream Come True....You Can Lose Weight While You Sleep

Sleep! Glorious sleep!

I’m always wary of believing the hype when it comes to easy weight-loss solutions. Take weight-loss tea for example. Um, you mean I can knock back a cup of tea and my body will knock off a few pounds? Suspicious! And I’m sorry, but all of those cellulite lotions we’ve invested in over the years, desperately attempting to massage away the excess fat? Doubtful, at best. But there is one piece of advice that, despite seeming too good to be true, is tried, tested and yes, actually true.

Simply, it has been proven that we can lose weight while we catch some zzzs. Sleep can tip the scale -- as long as it’s done right. Here’s everything you need to know about putting your metabolism to work after drifting off to sleep.
Sleep it off
When I was young, I wore bags under my eyes like badges of honour. “Look I can be hardcore and stay up all night!” Well, those days are over. Now catching up on "Scandal" and then catching up on sleep is where it’s really at. And, it’s a good thing, because vanishing almost as quickly as my social calendar is my shotty metabolism. I can use all the extra help I can get when it comes to protecting my waistline and amount of sleep plays a huge part in that.
Many studies have demonstrated the relationship between sleep and weight loss. The research shows that those who regularly get more than seven hours of sleep have higher metabolisms, burn more fat and have far better appetite control than those who don't. A big part of the correlation comes down to hormones. When we are sleep deprived we produce more ghrelin – the hormone that tells us when we’re hungry – and produce less leptin – the one that indicates when we’re satisfied. Another important issue is that when we’re tired we simply have less willpower. We're too tired to put up a fight when those doughnuts show up in the conference room and too eager to find an excuse not to hit the gym. Been there, doughnut that.
Chill out
There’s another small tweak that can help boost our ability to lose weight at night: turning down the thermostat (ladies with hot flashes, rejoice!). Research suggests a number of reasons why decreasing the temperature in the bedroom can help decrease our dress size. First, when our internal furnaces kick in to warm us up, more calories are burned at rest. ‘Nuff said! Secondly, studies show that sleeping in cooler temperatures increases the amount of brown fat, also known as the good fat, which actually helps our bodies burn more calories. Setting the thermostat to around 15°C has been shown to improve daily energy expenditure by anywhere from 100 to 200 calories. Lastly, being too warm can disrupt our REM sleep cycle. This means we’re less likely to get quality rest, which is a crucial component of keeping weight down and the willpower up.
Carb up!
Yes, you heard me! Turns out, carbing up at night can actually improve our bodies' ability to lose more weight while we sleep. It may seem counterintuitive since we’ve been inundated with advice to ban starchy foods after 3 p.m. for years, but according to Toronto-based executive weight loss specialist, Adele Tevlin, we’ve been misinformed. Tevlin actually encourages eating a healthy source of carbs at dinner (think sweet potato, brown rice or quinoa), a strategy known as “carb-back-loading.”
“The principle is all based on hormones. When we eat some carbs for our last meal of the day we secrete serotonin, which then converts to melatonin, the hormone responsible for sleep," she explains. "This leads to a better quality of sleep. And we know that better sleep is correlated with weight maintenance and total health.”

So go ahead and indulge in those evening carbs, just make sure to finish eating about two hours before bedtime.

I gotta say....It sounds almost too good to be true.