Hit the snooze button to avoid eating extra calories

Less sleep equals eating extra calories

You can easily gain extra weight by jolting awake to the sound of your alarm clock, when you haven't had enough sleep the night before.

This is according to new research from Mayo Clinic in which a group of healthy adults were studied for eight days. The results showed that those who got 80 minutes less sleep than a control group, consumed an extra 549 calories on average over the study period.

Even though they were awake for longer, their activity levels stayed the same and they didn't burn any additional calories by being awake during that extra time.

Avoid losing sleep

“If people want to maintain a healthy weight or lose weight, they should try to avoid sleep deprivation,” said Andrew D. Calvin, MD, co-investigator cardiology, fellow and assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic.

If you need to get up early in the morning, make sure that you get to bed early enough so that you don't wake up feeling exhausted due to lack of sleep.

Prepare for a good night's sleep

Not everyone can go to sleep the minute their heads hit the pillow, so it's important to keep that in mind too.

Read a few pages of a book, try some meditation or have a relaxing bath to help calm the mind and prepare for sleep.

The average adult needs between seven and eight hours of sleep every night.

Recommended reading: Healthy weight linked to a steady sleep pattern

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