Sleep Longer, Burn More Calories?

Summer is here and with it, thoughts of beach bodies and being active outside. With being active comes burning calories. We run, we lift weights, but we rarely think of sleep as a calorie burner. Your body is still burning calories, even when you're sleeping. Studies have shown that your brain uses 20% of your calorie intake per day and it continues to do this even when you're asleep. Just how many calories you burn, however, is tough to track.

Your body burns the most calories during deep REM sleep, when your brain is most active. This is because it requires the most oxygen to function. We cycle through several sleep stages (light to deep and REM) about every 90 minutes and repeat this cycle several times during the night. Likewise, metabolic activity also cycles throughout the night. Our brains are just as active (or even more active) during REM sleep, as they are while we are awake.

You should also be sure to get enough sleep, as sleep deprivation can negatively affect your overall metabolism. Basically, the less sleep you get, the slower your body burns calories to preserve energy - which can lead to your metabolism slowing down.

The temperature of our rooms when we sleep also play a role in calorie burning as our bodies need to be in a deep state of sleep to reach that calorie burning potential. The suggested bedroom temperature should be between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep. When lying in bed trying to snooze, your body temperature decreases to initiate sleep - and the proposed temperatures above can actually help facilitate this.

Bottom line: if you keep your bedroom cool and dark, and you get your recommended 7-9 hours of sleep per night, you'll be more likely to burn a few hundred calories while you sleep. But it's a fairly negligible amount, so don't throw out your gym membership just yet.