Sleep Quality and Weight

Poor sleep doesn’t just make you tired — it directly affects your weight. When you don’t get enough quality sleep, your body produces more of the hunger hormone ghrelin and less of the fullness hormone leptin. This hormonal shift can increase your appetite by up to 25%, especially for high-calorie, carbohydrate-rich foods.

Sleep deprivation and poor sleep quality disrupt the circadian regulation of key metabolic hormones — increasing ghrelin (the orexigenic hormone) while suppressing leptin (the anorexigenic hormone) — resulting in increased hunger and reduced satiety signalling. Additionally, sleep restriction impairs insulin sensitivity after just a few nights, reduces resting energy expenditure, and alters food-reward processing in the brain, promoting preference for energy-dense foods.

Sleep is now recognised as the third pillar of weight management alongside diet and exercise. At Accord Medical, Dr Joseph Wang routinely assesses sleep quality as part of a comprehensive weight management evaluation, as addressing sleep issues often unlocks weight loss that diet changes alone cannot achieve.