Yesterday I hadn't slept much and ate more because of it. That people eat more after too little sleep is also well documented: in experiments, healthy adults consume around 250 kilocalories more per day on average, mostly after dinner and with large differences between individuals and between sexes, while their energy expenditure rises only slightly, if at all. But why? A 2004 study of twelve young men pointed to the hormones leptin and ghrelin, but later meta-analyses show no consistent picture on this. The evidence points more strongly to an explanation in the brain: after too little sleep, the reward regions there respond more strongly to images of food, and the regions responsible for self-control also respond to them differently.
Sources
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- Markwald RR, Melanson EL, Smith MR, Higgins J, Perreault L, Eckel RH, Wright KP Jr: Impact of insufficient sleep on total daily energy expenditure, food intake, and weight gain, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110(14):5695-5700 (2013)
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- St-Onge MP, McReynolds A, Trivedi ZB, Roberts AL, Sy M, Hirsch J: Sleep restriction leads to increased activation of brain regions sensitive to food stimuli, Am J Clin Nutr 95(4):818-824 (2012)