Episode 34: Sleep.. or lack thereof

I have been getting an average of probably 5-4 hours of sleep a night lately.  Down from my usual 7-8.  I am beginning to feel it.  I have been reading a few studies lately about how sleep loss can affect weight loss.

One article says that sleeping less affects weight loss because you are more likely to drink caffeine to keep yourself awake and hit up the donuts or chocolate for a quick sugar rush.  Another article says that when you sleep you produce hormones that hormones that control appetite and metabolism that are required for healthy weight loss.  It wasn't a matter of what foods you ate, or how you ate them, according to this study, because in their fieldwork, they discovered that if you sleep less, you actually eat less too, but you still gain weight.

Getting a bit of shut eye is a bit difficult for me lately.  I want to stay up and talk or watch videos.  My eyes get droopy and my body relaxes, but my mind, for the most part will stay active and alert enough to hold a conversation, or comprehend a video.  I push the barriers of mental alertness until that too finally crashes and I may even drift off mid-sentence.  Even as I close my eyes, I fall quickly into very strange dreamettes. Snippets of dreams, and as my mind tries to struggle to stay alert, I will blend both dream world and real world for some.. very strange conversations.

I will try to catch up to sleep this weekend, but with lesson planning and some reading I want to do, not to mention the myriad events on SL and other (wonderful) distractions, I'm not sure how much rest I will actually get.

Is it worth it to stay up so late?  Emotionally, mentally I can say definitively yes.  Physically though my body is going to revolt soon.  I just hope it's not during class.

Love and lollipops to all. I hope you have a wonderful everything!

ToryLynn