DIET | DETECTIVE^®

When you don’t sleep enough and wake up feeling exhausted, you are on a weight-gaining cycle. You skip breakfast in order to sleep a little longer and grab a doughnut or muffin on the way to work. For lunch you choose a cheeseburger with fries and a Coke. You really need those calories to keep you going through an afternoon of desk work, Around 4 pm your eyes begin to close but you know if you eat something sweet you won’t be caught napping on your keyboard.

By the time work is over, going to the gym is out of the question; you are so tired you would trip over your sneaker laces. So is going to the supermarket. Why even bother buying fresh vegetables and fruit? It takes too much effort to pick the best ones. You can’t summon the energy to take anything out of the freezer either. It’s so much easier to pick up a pizza or Chinese food on the way home or better yet, order it so you can rest on the couch until the food arrives.

You know you should go to bed early to catch up on the sleep you missed the night before but there is something on TV you want to watch. Ice cream or chips will keep you awake through the program. Then, feeling stuffed, you finally go to bed and hope you can sleep.

This somewhat exaggerated description of the consequences of inadequate sleep and the resulting fatigue does describe an overlooked but common cause of weight gain. Fatigue is the catalyst that starts a person on a weight-gaining spiral. The response to feeling exhausted is to give up any control over eating and to decrease, or eliminate altogether, physical activity.

Think of how you feel when getting over a viral infection. The fatigue that follows the acute stage of an infection feels smothering. People speak of their limbs feeling as heavy as stone and being unable to summon interest in doing anything but lying down and watching TV. This type of fatigue does go away. Yet there are other causes of fatigue, which may be chronic or reoccur often enough, to make following any sort of diet and exercise plan extremely difficult. Insufficient or disrupted sleep is a major cause of daytime tiredness.  Too little or disrupted sleep can be caused by wakeful children, snoring spouses, noise, jet lag, pain, and medications such as antidepressants. In addition to the hot flushes of menopause, simple aging can cause a person to awake multiple times during the night.

One or two days of fatigue may be endurable but feeling tired all the time may push your up weight as inevitably as eating two desserts every night. The solutions, other than waiting for your kids to grow up or your partner to wear a snore guard, may be to seek professional help. Very serious problems may require evaluation in a sleep clinic. If you take antidepressants and you notice that your sleep problems started or worsened, ask your physician for help. The broken sleep that is associated with grower older (45 and up) seems to be associated with a diminished production of a hormone, melatonin. Taking tiny doses of supplemental melatonin (0.3 mg is the optimal dose) replaces what your body made when you were twenty.  Higher doses may cause side effects such as daytime sleepiness and eventually even more insomnia.

Until you are able to solve the sleep problem, be aware of its impact on your eating.  When you are tired, you look at food as a weapon to fight daytime fatigue. Your head says, “Don’t bother me with all those diet rules and regulations. I am going to eat whatever will help me to keep going.”

Ironically, the foods that are usually chosen will actually increase fatigue. The doughnut at breakfast, the cheeseburger, fries and Coke at lunch, chocolate chip cookies at 4 and the sausage pizza for dinner will make you feel muddle-headed, unable to think clearly and even more tired. This is because high-fat foods, under the best of circumstances, leave you feeling as if the only job you can do is to test mattresses.

There are no foods that will energize you as much as a good night’s sleep but these guidelines will give you the mental stamina to get through the day, even if you were up most of the night.

Eat light, low-fat foods.  If you must skip breakfast, have a small container of yogurt, a handful of breakfast cereal and a banana when you get to work. Drink coffee or tea if that helps you stay alert.

Your fatigue will make your productivity slide during the afternoon so make sure your lunch choices keep you alert.  Eat salads, steamed vegetables if you can get them, and lean protein such as tuna, chicken or turkey or low-fat cold cuts, or fish, seafood, or tofu. Avoid high-fat dressings. Make sure you drink enough water or no-calorie beverages. Dehydration will make you feel even more tired.

Get some fresh air. Go outside, even for a few minutes, at lunch. Walk briskly or climb stairs. If you increase your heart rate, your brain will receive some more oxygen and you will feel more awake.

The late afternoon is a danger zone. People feel tired even if they have slept well. It may be due to a slump in the brain levels of serotonin, a chemical that normally relieves fatigue and increases concentration.  You can increase your serotonin levels by controlled snacking on fat-free or very low-fat carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates when eaten alone, without protein, stimulate the brain into restoring serotonin levels.  Eating the right amount of graham crackers, rice crackers, popcorn, pretzels, licorice sticks or dry cereal will increase your energy in about 20 to 30 minutes. (You can find that amount, along with lots of other snacking choices, in our book The Serotonin Power Diet.)

A very short nap of 10 minutes or so is also restorative. Longer naps will make it hard to fall asleep at night.

And keep in mind that exercise is a fatigue-buster. Study after study has shown that as little as l0 minutes of strenuous exercise will make you feel more energetic.  Jumping rope, running up 2 or 3 flights of stairs, power walking or jogging around the block or to your car, or going for a brisk walk with your dog will increase your heart rate and oxygen flow to your brain.

Plan on going to bed early. Get your body relaxed by eating a meal that will calm and soothe you. Eat only carbohydrates, vegetables and fruit for dinner. Eliminating protein will get the most impact from the serotonin producing carbohydrates. In addition to taking away fatigue, serotonin will soothe and calm you into a restful night’s sleep.

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