Do you burn calories when you sleep? Yes, we all do. Sleep is perceived as the time of complete rest. On the surface, we observe rare and simple body movements and the slowing down of inner processes. However, our body never stops working.
Blood transportation, food processing, brain activity are some of the numerous processes that go on when we sleep. All of these require energy. The only way to get this energy during sleep is to burn calories accumulated during the day. To calculate ‘how many calories do you burn in your sleep’ you should consider the speed of metabolism and body weight.
How many calories do you burn sleeping?
When we speak about calories, it’s always challenging to count the exact amount of calories both gained and burned. Despite this, there is an approximate formula to find out how many calories are burned when sleeping. It’s been researched that, on average, a person who weighs 60 kg burns around 40 calories per hour of sleep. Having a sufficient sleep of 7 to 9 hours, such a person can get rid of up to 360 calories overnight. Still, you should remember that oversleep, as well as sleep deficit, are harmful to your health and can imbalance your metabolism.
If you wonder ‘how many calories do I burn when I sleep?’, you can figure out your basal metabolic rate (BMR). It shows the number of calories you burn at rest (including sleep) during one day. It depends on your age, sex, and body mass. The good news is that the higher mass you have, the more calories you’ll burn while resting or being active.
How to lose calories while sleeping
Getting enough sleep is a good way of preventing excess weight gain. Anyway, if you want to make sleep calorie burn more effective, you should be active during the day too. Physical activity boosts your BMR and encourages your body to lose more. Muscles burn more calories at rest than fat does.
Being overweight is often the symptom of serious disorders, like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, sleep apnea, etc. If you don’t feel up to increasing your physical activity, you can opt for a healthier sleep. Calories burned when sleeping are the ones that gradually balance your weight with a little effort.
