To Lose Weight, Lose The Alarm Clock

If you feel draggy, cranky and groggy when your alarm goes off in the morning, the jarring ring of the clock may be making you obese and unhealthy. Social jet lag, the fact that your body’s internal clock is at war with your daily waking and sleeping schedule, may be working to expand your waistline.

“We have identified a syndrome in modern society that has not been recognized until recently,” says Till Roenneberg of the University of Munich. “It concerns an increasing discrepancy between the daily timing of the physiological clock and the social clock. As a result of this social jet lag, people are chronically sleep-deprived. They are also more likely to smoke and drink more alcohol and caffeine. (We’re also finding) that social jet lag contributes to obesity; the plot that social jet lag is really bad for our health is thickening.”

Each of us has a biological clock, Roenneberg explains. We can’t set those clocks like watches. They are entrained by daylight and night-darkness to provide the optimal window for sleep and waking. In modern society, we listen to those clocks “less and less due to the increasing discrepancy between what the body clock tells us and what the boss tells us.”

Roenneberg and his team have collected 10 years of data that show that people with more severe social jet lag are also more likely to be overweight. In other words, it appears that living “against the clock” may be a factor contributing to the obesity epidemic.

“Waking up with an alarm clock is a relatively new facet of our lives,” Roenneberg says. “It simply means that we haven’t slept enough and this is the reason why we are chronically tired. Good sleep and enough sleep is not a waste of time but a guarantee for better work performance and more fun with friends and family during off-work times.”