You Need 8 Hours of Sleep to Eat Healthy!

You need to get plenty of sleep to lose weight and eat healthy. When the body is tired it goes for carbs to "energize" itself. It is not energy it need but rest. See the following:

The Dream Diet: Losing Weight While You Sleep
Can more sleep really help us control our weight? Three top experts explore the possibilities.
By Colette Bouchez
WebMD Weight Loss Clinic-Feature
Reviewed by Leonard J. Sonne, MD

Lose weight while you sleep. It sounds like something you'd hear on a late night infomercial -- just around the time you are reaching for that bag of cookies because, well, you can't sleep.

But as wild as the idea sounds, substantial medical evidence suggests some fascinating links between sleep and weight. Researchers say that how much you sleep and quite possibility the quality of your sleep may silently orchestrate a symphony of hormonal activity tied to your appetite.

"One of the more interesting ideas that has been smoldering and is now gaining momentum is the appreciation of the fact that sleep and sleep disruption do remarkable things to the body -- including possibly influencing our weight," says David Rapoport, MD, associate professor and director of the Sleep Medicine Program at the New York University School of Medicine in New York City.

While doctors have long known that many hormones are affected by sleep, Rapoport says it wasn't until recently that appetite entered the picture. What brought it into focus, he says, was research on the hormones leptin and ghrelin. First, doctors say that both can influence our appetite. And studies show that production of both may be influenced by how much or how little we sleep.

In fact, have you ever experienced a sleepless night followed by a day when no matter what you ate you never felt full or satisfied? If so, then you have experienced the workings of leptin and ghrelin.