Your insomnia is making you gain weight
And we don’t mean the cookies. Though they probably don’t help either
As a freshman, I have been particularly concerned with the “freshman 15” because really ain’t nobody got time for fat.
Two months in and a lot of my friends are starting to feel their jeans tightening, although most blame it on the obscenely hot dryers in the laundry rooms.
I hate to break it to you but chicken finger Friday isn’t why you are packing on the pounds.
It’s because you’re not sleeping.
Yes, your lack of sleep is causing you to gain weight. A study was carried out recently by Behavioral Sleep Medicine who examined the sleep patterns of 132 Brown freshmen.
The study took place over a course of nine weeks and had participants keep a sleep journal throughout the time. Shockingly, more than half of the students in this study gained about nine pounds.
The average Brown student, supposedly, goes to bed at 1.30am. And due to our varying schedules we sleep and wake up at varying times during the week, which researchers suggests exacerbates the issue.
This goes beyond how many hours you get in every night, but also the time in which you sleep and get up each day. Looks like having a bedtime was useful after all.
When life hits you hard
Interestingly, the study indicated that the lack of sleep manifests itself differently between men and women with women on average gaining more weight than boys.
There may be several reasons for this in terms of different physiology, but its just something to keep in mind. All in all, we are all trying to figure out a balance between work, social life and most importantly sleep.
Some of us are better than this than others, but it is clear from the evidence presented that sleep is paramount to our health and general wellbeing.
Although now we do not have our parents here to us when to sleep, we need to make our own schedules and really (try to) abide by them to the best of our ability.