Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast. In our last episode we spoke about how a lack of sleep can alter your appetite regulating systems and therefore

lead to an excess amount of eating. However, weight gain caused by a lack of sleep isn't simply about you wanting to eat more food.

It's also about a change in what you want to eat.

So if I limit a group of healthy normal weight

individuals to say just four or five hours of sleep a night for several nights,

they don't just eat more food, but their preferences for what food groups they

start binging on will also change.

And what we've discovered as a field is that these types of under slept individuals will suffer a 33% increased desire to eat

obeseogenic sugary treats such as things like ice cream or cookies what I would describe as a

Brit as biscuits as well as chocolate.

Now in addition they also experience a 30% increased craving

for heavy hitting carbohydrate foods

such as bread and pasta and pizza and finally those under slept

individuals will have an additional 45% increase in the desire to eat salty snacks, which as you probably know can adversely impact your blood pressure.

So in other words, when you are starved of sleep, you literally feel starved.

And as a consequence, you eat more, and you eat more of the type of foods that will lead to weight gain.

However, the food choices that you make and the actual act of eating itself

is ultimately decided by your brain. So is your brain also a part of this sleep

loss weight gain equation? And several years ago my research team and I decided to

address this question and we'll actually discover the answers to that question in just a second.

The sponsor supporting today's podcast is Inside Tracker.

Now I'm sure that you've probably heard of Inside Tracker. Now, I'm sure that you've probably heard of Inside Tracker from lots of folks,

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