Sleep Your Way to Being Thin

Are you overweight because you’re tired, or are you tired because you’re overweight? That’s the question Canadian researchers are out to answer. In the latest edition of the journal Sleep, experts at Laval University found that people getting less than six or more than nine hours of sleep were more likely to be overweight, while people who hovered in the seven to eight hours of sleep zone were more likely to be thin.
 
These researchers argue that being sleepy causes your body to be too tired to exercise while hormones continue to tell you to eat—causing the weight gain. And why does too much sleep make you gain weight? It could be that people aren’t actually sleeping that long but lingering in bed.
 
For the next week, work on getting to sleep early enough so that you will wake up within that magical time of seven to eight hours. By the end of the week, see if you've achieved any weight loss. The results probably won’t be instantaneous, but over time you might just notice a difference. [MSNBC]