There is a big connection between sleep and fat. Simply put, if you’re staying awake until the wee hours of the morning, your body starts storing fat. But sleep isn’t just about a number of hours. So, if you’re frequently waking up throughout the night, your body is storing more fat. In my blog post, “Sleeplessness is not a badge of honor,” I briefly mentioned how sleep deprivation negatively affects your thought processes and emotions. But unhealthy sleeping habits can also bring unwanted changes to your body … like weight gain. More specifically, it’s fat gain.

When you’re not sleeping well, your metabolism suffers. Below I describe 7 important metabolic changes that take place during sleep deprivation, and the 7 hormones at the center of it all.

Melatonin for Sleep

60 million people in the United States take meds to help them sleep. 60 million! And you might’ve heard of one holistic option - melatonin. So ... melatonin is not really a medication. It’s a naturally derived hormone....

Nope! This doesn't require needles or tests or actual blood.

Yup! It’s important even if you don’t have diabetes.

But, it’s especially important, if you do have diabetes. We are hard-wired to love sugar. It’s delicious! But does sugar benefit us beyond its taste? Are there any consequences to loving sugar? To understand how eating sugar affects us, we have to understand how our body turns food into fuel.

Metabolism is turning food into fuel.

Simply put, metabolism is turning food into fuel. As soon as you pop a bit of food into your mouth, metabolism begins. Once you swallow, metabolism continues in the stomach and the gut. However, the exact process of metabolism varies depending on what each bite contains.

When the bite contains carbohydrates, affectionately known as carbs, your blood sugar goes up. A carb is a nutrient defined by its chemical makeup: a combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. For our purposes, a carb is a vegetable, fruit or grain.

But carbs are not create...