Think You're Getting Enough Sleep? 4 Symptoms Say Otherwise
How it's linked to sleep: A lack of sleep makes you crave junk food, because the part of your brain that normally argues against ice cream for dinner stops firing on all cylinders. In a 2013 study, researchers from the University of California at Berkley used brain scans of sleep-deprived people to show that higher-calorie foods increased activity in areas that control your desire to eat. At the same time, the lack of sleep reduced activity in the frontal cortex, the region that governs solid decision-making. That could help explain why research presented at the Endocrine Society's 2015 annual meeting found that subjects with just 30 minutes of sleep debt (meaning they averaged 30 minutes less sleep on weeknights than weekends) were 17 percent more likely to be obese.
Keep in mind: Even if your clothes don't feel snug, if you're trying to lose weight and the scale doesn't budge, too little sleep may still be to blame, says Joanne Getsy, MD, medical director of the Drexel Sleep Center in Philadelphia, as your body burns fat less efficiently when it's tired.