Less sleep, mo' hunger

I don't have a lot of time or patience for Yuri Elkaim, the magically-browed Internet guru whose effort to package the latest thinking in health & nutrition into a series of literature and videos turns mostly good information into a mess of a shrill hard-sell. When I have the time, I listen to his (free) pod casts and browse the many emails he sends on a daily basis. One caught my eye recently.

It starts with the usual amped-up, oh-my-golly subject, "Did this happen to you this morning?"

Do you ever pry your eyes open at the crack of dawn, look at the time, and hit the snooze button…several times over? If so, you probably don't consider yourself a morning person. You apparently don't feel like the Energizer Bunny first thing when you get out of bed.
But is that normal? Are some individuals just NOT made for mornings? The truth is that it's NOT normal.

After some babble about worn out glands and "3 secrets", the website the email directs to is just another long, winding hard sell for Yuri's stuff. But it got me thinking. I saw the video above on the Internets just the day before, and I went into the weekend expecting to have a 140+ mile bike blowout, but had to cancel it due to last-minute family obligations. Instead of getting 4-5 hours of sleep each night and draining myself to the max, I ended up sleeping 10+ hours each night with a nap each afternoon.

I had to read this twice, because the first time I did not read it as "tips". Gendered vision, I suppose.

Come Monday morning, I know I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was surprised by how great I felt. I woke up at 4 (after getting a proper 8 hours of sleep) and lifted weights, the first time in 3 week at full capacity. It's taken almost two solid weeks to recover from a week of 300+ miles on the bike, and it's never taken me so long to recover in the past. Am I getting sick? It's can't be my diet or level of fitness, so what could it be?

I'm not getting enough sleep. Should have been obvious? I've been waking up at 4am most mornings to lift weights, get cooking and chores done, sometimes 3am to get a weird cycling ride in. While I've been strict and religious about when I wake up (and what I eat, and how I work out), I have not been strict about when I go to sleep. I've been depending on when I get tired, sometimes falling asleep in front of the TV, but not really paying attention to the time. I've only been getting 5-6 hours of sleep most nights...for the past few months. I've always been able to function on 5-6 hours and feel good, but met with some catch up sleep on the weekends. This summer, all my weekends have been wake up and ride, not stay in and sleep.

In the past year, my approach to reclaiming my health and losing some weight has been based on two pillars: first and foremost, eat better in appropriate quantities. Secondly, embrace cycling and weights as a two fisted way to tighten up.

On all available occasions, I do the Tighten Up. 

Now it's occurring to me that this two pronged effort might be all for naught if I neglect a 3rd pillar: get enough sleep. Which begs the question, what am I doing to myself by not getting enough shut-eye?

Going through the Internet, there are lots of lists outlining many points about what a lack of sleep does to you, but one jumped out at me immediately:

“Studies show that over time, people who are getting six hours of sleep, instead of seven or eight, begin to feel that they’ve adapted to that sleep deprivation -- they’ve gotten used to it,” Gehrman says. “But if you look at how they actually do on tests of mental alertness and performance, they continue to go downhill. So there’s a point in sleep deprivation when we lose touch with how impaired we are.”

Have I lost touch? Well, I've kept up with my diet and eating schedule, and looking at the last month or so....well, I've been missing my average daily goal of calorie consumption week after week. A lot of the lists have overlapping bullets: lack of sleep will....

• Make you lose focus, and shorten your attention span
• Make you moody, even depressed
• Make you lose interest in sex
• Make you forgetful
• Make you less coordinated and prone to accident
• over the long term, put stress on your internal organs and lead to increased chances of stroke, heart failure, diabetes, and more

The one universal bullet across all the listicles, however, is that lack of sleep:

• Makes you fat.

Urrrg.

Researchers at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital found that sleep-deprived people seem to burn the same number of calories as the well-rested, but they consume about 300 more calories a day....

When we get too little shut-eye, our metabolism slows down to conserve energy. That slowdown triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which increases appetite. Your body thinks it needs more energy, so it asks for more food.

In a vicious cycle, sleep loss also causes our bodies to release more ghrelin, another hormone that signals hunger, and less leptin, the hormone that tells your stomach that it’s full. With your hormones off-kilter, your body wants more food and lacks the sensitivity to know when to stop eating. Not to mention that being awake more hours gives you more time to snack.

Kitteh needs a nap or three.

Multiple sources cited multiple studies and sources all saying the same thing: too little sleep will mess with your hormones and make you hungrier without the matching calories expenditure. It makes sense: since starting to play with caffeine and less sleep, my calorie counts have started to regularly pass my 2350 calorie limit, despite my resolve & discipline being as firm as it ever was. Up until now, my attitude was, "well, if I'm this hungry after eating my allotment, that must be my body signaling that it needs more calories because perhaps my metabolism is naturally increasing from current activities." Now I wonder is it the opposite -- I'm causing my metabolism to get sluggish, therefore motivating my hormones to charge in and try to get me to eat more?

These past two weeks I've been recording how much I sleep, and because of that, I've been sleeping a bit more. Let's hope it impacts November's weigh-in as we move into the cold, hungry months.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2307

Good eating week, I credit....sleep! It's a bit of a bear fitting in sleep with silly little things like working a full time gig, raising kids, eating all home made food, and having a relationship with that wife-like person who shares my travails, but I guess we'll just have to throttle back television even further. Well, Breaking Bad is over, so perhaps it's time to pull the cable-plug (and bill) sooner than later...

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MONDAY COUNT: 2565

SLEPT: 8:15pm-4:30am, 8.25 hours

Woke up early to watch the Breaking Bad finale while my whole wheat matzo balls simmered. Leg's 80% recovered from the beating of an all day ride on Saturday matched with a slow ride to Coney on the big bike with kids. Disappointed I busted the budget, but SO worth it, as it was with a dear friend I don't see enough, and it's just an estimation -- I was honestly hungry when I sat down for my evening snack, so it's open to interpretation.

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10:15am, Steel cut oatmeal  415 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, falafel, homemade matzoball-mushroom soup, health salad, 590 cal
Hard to get a confident caloric measure on something as handcrafted as chicken stock, but based on commerical products, I suspect it's not much. After portioning the soup into 6 pint containers, I'm comfortable calling it 260 cal, about the same as the frozen stuff I was buying.

PM SNACK: 4 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, Taxi driver vegetarian Indian food, 1/2 a cronut, +/- 800 cal
Had to break routine to see a friend in from Europe, who I barely get to see once a year if I'm lucky. She's very worldly, so she thoroughly appreciated the high quality of the low brow Indian food served out of trays behind a counter from a seedy, run down but very busy and reputable taxi stand. Because she's currently in France, we had to hunt down a (knock off) cronut to celebrate the US & France in perfect harmony! 

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, fritos, 300 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 1905

SLEPT: 10pm-5:30am, 7.5 hours

Dinner took a long time to make, had to get to sleep early, so there was no time to eat an evening snack, he.

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Fage yogurt with almonds, agave and vanilla, 310

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, madras lentils, steamed string beans, 610 cal

PM SNACK: 4 pm, momma salad, hummus, 100 cal

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:45pm, pork tenderloin, roasted brussel sprouts, quinoa, 575 cal

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2395

SLEPT: 8:30pm-4am, 7.5 hours

Everyone in bed by 8, but between getting 2nd bottles, whispering stories to Edie to get her to sleep, and my own racing mind, didn't get to real sleep until 8:30. Woke up tired, not the deepest sleep. Woke up hungry, too, which is not such a bad thing.

AM SNACK: 4:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, Steel cut oatmeal  415 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, pork tenderloin, roasted brussel sprouts, quinoa, 575 cal

PM SNACK: 4 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 8:45pm, stirfry with shrimp, shiritaki noodles, shitaki mushroom and black bean sauce, roasted asparagus, 645 cal
Behind on my vegetable consumption due to Monday night's outing, caught up tonight.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, fritos, 300 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 2210

SLEPT: 10:15pm-4:45am, 6.5 hours

Got to bed late due to late dinner and excess energy, woke up 15 minutes before my alarm due to light, dream-infused sleep.

AM SNACK: 4:15am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:45am, Steel cut oatmeal  415 cal
Whoops, turn for yogurt, totally spaced.

LUNCH: 1pm, pork tenderloin, roasted brussel sprouts, quinoa, 575 cal

PM SNACK: 4 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 5:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 7:30pm, Subway 6" veggie burger sub, chips, diet coke, 760

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FRIDAY COUNT: 2460

SLEPT: 9:30pm-4:30am, 7 hours

Another restless night due to unseasonably warm weather. If I was crazy, I'd downgrade my 7 hours quantity to 6 hours of quality, but that would be a bit hinky I suppose.

AM SNACK: 5am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/ginger/cayenne/cucumber juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9am, fruit smoothie 410 cal
Put it in the fridge when made at 7:30, drank it when got home from swapping out bikes to get to work. This is a good fit in the future, it's no good to have a high-cal breakfast too early, or it'll set me up to be way hungry before lunch.

LUNCH: 1pm, almond butter and grape jelly on whole wheat, health salad, 590 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30 pm, momma salad, hummus, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, poppa salad with homemade Italian, 150 cal

DINNER: 6:30pm, chicken breast, homemade baked ziti, roasted broccoli, homemade chocolate ice cream & brownies with chocolate syrup, +/- 1000 cal

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WEEKEND REPORT
Bad eating weekend, ate very emotionally. Fun trip to Costco with Edie on the big bike Saturday morning (cheap sushi in the cafe!), a kid's birthday party in the afternoon (grilled hotdogs! cake!). Sunday, road 65 miles, was supposed to do 100+ on an organized ride but fog and drizzle cut my efforts short. Crappy food on the ride, but I made up for it in spades sitting around the house in the afternoon (cupcake making with kids! Chinese take out with the family! Finish the homemade chocolate ice cream as it'll be bad by next weekend! etc) By the time I got to bed on Sunday, was looking forward to getting back to some good eating again. My body just...feels better stuffed full of good quality, nutrient-dense, calorie-light, fiber-filled foods.