Dr. Michael Grandner

They're eating at night for emotional reasons.

They eat at night because they feel like it helps them wind down.

They eat at night because they're stressed.

And what's interesting is when you, in a sleep deprivation study, if you take somebody and you sleep deprive them, there've been a number of studies that did this and they look to see what you see, what calories they're consuming.

And on average, people tend to consume about 350 to 600 extra calories per 24 hours when you sleep-deprived them in the lab.

Not in the morning.

If anything, they eat a little bit less first thing in the morning.

Not in the middle of the day, not snacking, not dinner, but after dinner.

That's when all the snacking, the extra snacking seems to occur.

especially when people are kept up past the point that their body wanted to go to sleep.

So if you're up and all of a sudden, and it's getting late and all of a sudden you're really hungry, you probably should have been in bed already.

That was your brain telling you, what are you doing up still?

I guess you're going to have to have another meal if you're going to keep going, but because you're supposed to be in bed already.

I was done.

Like we checked out, like, are we doing another shift or what?

And there's reasons for this, but people start craving... For a lot of years, people in the sleep world were talking about, is it carbs?

Is it fat?

I just think it's energy.

People are craving energy.

They're craving calorie-dense food.