Jimmy Kimmel Is Making You Fat

You eat well and exercise, but you still don’t have the lean body you desire.

You have some extra fat around your abdomen, hips, thighs, or the back of your arms.

There are two important players you might not be considering: the hormones ghrelin and leptin.

Ghrelin is secreted by your stomach when there isn’t much food there. With high amounts of ghrelin, your brain sends signals of hunger. Ghrelin can be thought of as the hunger hormone.

Leptin is secreted by your fat cells when you have a sufficient amount of fat stored. With high amounts of leptin, your brain sends signals of fullness. Leptin can be thought of as the fullness hormone.

Pharmaceutical businesses are spending millions of dollars and working their butts off to try to make it possible to manipulate these hormones via medication. Of course, they are.

On the other hand, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and the like are doing everything they can to mess with the ghrelin and leptin in your body.

What?

With poor sleep:

1. Your levels of ghrelin rise.
2. Your levels of leptin fall.

With inadequate sleep comes higher levels of ghrelin and lower levels of leptin. More hunger hormone and less fullness hormone. If hunger is the gas pedal of a car and fullness is the brake pedal, this is like having two feet on the gas pedal and nothing to slow you down.

With plenty of high-quality sleep comes optimal levels of ghrelin and leptin. This is like having one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake pedal. As such, getting plenty of sleep is essential to maintaining an optimized appetite-satiety response and to weight loss and weight maintenance.

Jimmy Kimmel might be making you laugh, but he’s also making you fat!

But only if you let him. Just turn off the television early enough that you can get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Better yet, do something relaxing in the evening that doesn’t involve a screen.

Going deeper, here’s how to sleep like a log:

1. Make sure your bedroom is comfortable: not too hot and not too cold. If you’re too hot or too cold, you won’t sleep as well as you can. A bedroom at 60 to 65 degrees at night is best for most people.
2. Make sure your bedroom is very dark. The darker the better. Make sure there are no lights from any electronic devices. Your body perceives this light as daylight, and this negatively affects the quality of your sleep.
3. Make sure your bedroom is very quiet. Complete silence or white noise from a fan, humidifier, or a similar device is best.
4. Avoid eating within a few hours of bedtime. Give yourself some time to digest your food before you go to sleep.
5. Don’t drink water in the evening. Drink water in the morning and throughout the day between meals, but don’t drink water in the evening.
6. Ideally, spend the few hours before bedtime resting. This makes it easier to wind down, fall asleep, and sleep deeply.
7. Ideally, avoid all screens the few hours before you go to sleep (or use blue-light-blocking tools). Artificial light, especially blue light from computers, tablets, phones, and similar devices, inhibits the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that impacts your sleep and wake cycles.
8. Reserve your bed for sleep and sex. If you associate your bed with things like paying bills and checking e-mail, it can be tougher for you to wind down and fall asleep. Use your bed only for sleep and sex. When you get in bed, you’ll get a strong signal that it’s time to doze off (or have sex then doze off).
9. Increase your exposure to light during the day. Get outside during the day whenever possible. When you’re indoors, let in as much light as possible.

Getting plenty of high-quality sleep comes with countless benefits—including a lean body.

Sweet dreams.

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.