Can you burn calories while sleeping?

 

Every time weight loss is discussed, everyone always associates it with strenuous exercise. However, it turns out that you can burn calories when you are lying down motionless. This is because your body needs a lot of fuel during sleep – Glucose is needed to accomplish many vital tasks! When you fall asleep, your body will begin to work. It not only needs to ensure that various organs can maintain normal function but also required to repair cells and muscles that were damaged during the day. Food also needs to be broken down into fuel to deal with our daily activities. The brain is very active during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The heart rate and blood pressure rise using a lot of glucose, making it a period of burning calories.

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So, how many calories can be consumed in one night's sleep? This depends on many factors, one of which is the length of sleep. The longer you sleep, the more times you enter the REM stage, the more calories you can burn. Taking a healthy adult weighing 125 pounds as an example, in one hour of sleep, about 38 calories is burned. According to the guidelines of the American National Sleep Foundation, adults aged over 25 need to sleep for an average of 7-8 hours per night. So, one night's sleep consumes 266 calories, which is roughly equivalent to a 200 gram bowl of rice.