Ep. 21 Sleep and cravings in teens

Want to learn more about how to control the  cravings during teen years?

Here is a tip: Sleep better!

I present the research below:

"Associations of Sleep with Food Cravings, Diet, and Obesity in Adolescence 

Nutrients 2019, 11, 2899; doi:10.3390/nu11122899"

Hope you find this helpful!

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach. 
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Transcript

Teenager Food Cravings and Sleep Relationship

Speaker 1 0:04

Are you getting frustrated with what to feed a teenager who is always hungry ? Everybody knows that teenagers have a huge appetite . It seems like you need to feed them constantly to satisfy their hunger . It's even more difficult where teenagers who struggle with their weight truly want to make changes like cut down on junk food or stop ever eating , and they can't . There is frustration , isolation , stress , and that's why I decided to create a recipe collection of 30 easy and healthy meals for teenagers . They are all high in protein to satisfy your teenager's hunger and they can all be ready in less than 30 minutes . If you want to grab a free copy , go to lifestell14scom for the last recipes .

Speaker 2 1:05

This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast . If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight , you are in the right place . If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips , dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children , because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children . This podcast is for educational purposes only . Dr Gorgary does not provide medical , psychological or nutrition therapy advice . You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host , dr Jenny Gorgary .

Speaker 1 1:49

Hello , welcome for another episode on the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast . This is Dr Jenny Gorgary . I'm here with you today to talk about a topic I've talked before , but I'm going to approach it from a different angle . I'm going to talk today about food cravings and their relationship with poor sleep in teenagers , and we all have experienced food cravings . Now , what is a food craving exactly ? Food craving is this strong desire for something that you really want to eat , and it's not necessarily driven by hunger . So if you ask yourself , can I have an apple right now ? Am I really hungry ? If you're really hungry , the answer to that question is going to be yes . But if you're not hungry and you say no , I don't want an apple , I just want to have a piece of cake , and that's what I want . And if you offer me anything else besides this piece of cake , I don't want it . So that is really what a craving is . I'm sure you have experienced it . I know I experienced cravings frequently in my life in the past more frequently so and the reason I wanted to make this podcast is because one reason why we can have these cravings is because we are not having good quality sleep . There are other reasons , but this episode is going to really focus on a research study that actually was done in teenagers and investigated what is the association between the sleep and those unhealthy food cravings . Okay , so let's dive right into it . The title of the manuscript is associations of sleep with food cravings , diet and obesity in adolescents . It was published in 2019 in the Journal of Nutrients and it was done by Celsic Crutch and the team at the University of Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute .

Speaker 1 4:21

So let's see what the researchers did . They asked teenagers between the ages of 10 to 16 years of age to wear a specific accelerometer in their wrist . Accelerometers are similar to smart watches . They have the ability to not only measure how much physically active you are and how many steps you do , but they also can , if you wear it at night , they can also check your sleep , like what time you go to bed , what time you wake up , and they can also check and see what time of this time that you spent in bed you're actually sleeping . The way they can calculate it is because they are very sensitive in movement . So if you know that you're not moving at all when you're sleeping , that's how you know you are in deep sleep . So they gave them these smart watches let's call them like that to wear them so they can capture the information on their sleep and their movement . And they asked them to wear it at least three days in order for them to be eligible to get all the data that they needed . And one of these days was a weekend , right , so they asked at least two days during the day and one at least one weekend day

Sleep and Food Cravings Study

Speaker 1 5:50

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Speaker 1 5:50

Now they also asked them to collect what we call dietary recalls . You probably have heard about this from others studies that have presented . Basically , they asked them to fill out questionnaires on what they ate on the previous three days and just write down the quantity and the quality of what they ate exactly . So after they do that , then they were collecting data on how many calories they consumed and also what type of food they ate . So they also , in this particular research , they collected data on what was the quality of the food .

Speaker 1 6:34

Then they also gave teenagers a specific questionnaire that is designed to measure food cravings . So this particular questionnaire was asking like , for example , did you crave chocolate how many times ? Like , did you always check it and the cravings was done to assess the cravings over a month , the previous month prior to participation in the study . So they say I never had this craving the last month , or I had it a few times , or I almost had it every day . So they tried to get a sense of how strong were these cravings .

Speaker 1 7:22

And then they had specific categories of food . There were like eight foods that they were in high-fat foods . There were other foods that were in sweet foods . There are eight foods that they were in the carbohydrate category . There were four foods in the fast food and they also actually did fruits and vegetables . And just so to give you few examples that are also used in this food craving scale , like , for example , they would ask how frequently did you have the craving for fried chicken , sausage , bacon , cookies , chocolate or donuts or cake or cinnamon rolls or ice cream or pancakes or biscuits or rice or baked potato or pasta or cereal or hamburger , french fries , chips , pizza , gravy , fried fish , cornbread , hot dog , steak , brownies , cookies . So those are some examples of food cravings . So if you ever had an intense desire for any of those foods that I just mentioned , that may be an indication that you are experience like what we defined in the beginning as a food craving . Okay .

Speaker 1 8:44

So once they feel that this questionnaire , of course they also ask them to come to the clinic , and where they collected data on their height , weight and again they calculated the body mass index , which , as I've mentioned before , is a measurement of how much overweight a certain teenager is . So if you want to learn more about that , I invite you to go back on the episode one , where I explain what the body mass index , because it's a measurement that is used across all studies . It's an assessment tool for the degree of obesity . Okay , so then what did they find after this study ? Let me tell you right now . So there were a total of 342 participants that completed the initial questionnaires . The average age was 12.4 years and 45% of them were boys and the rest were girls . The average time that they slept was 8.7 hours . And then , when they looked at what was , was there any association between the sleep duration and any particular food cravings for high fat , sweets , carbs or fast food ? They did not find a significant association . However , when they looked at the relationship of the sleep efficiency with those particular categories of food , then they did find a significant association of the sleep efficiency with high fat foods , with sweets , and with carbs and starch cravings .

Speaker 1 10:38

Now , what is sleep efficiency ? Sleep efficiency is the amount of time you actually spend sleeping when you are in what we call total sleep period , because there are interruption . There can be interruptions in the sleep and you don't spend the whole time . While you're sleeping in deep sleep , where you're actually sleeping and your brain is in this mode where it recovers and a lot of balance of your brain takes place , there you may be sleeping , you may be in bed nine hours , but you may , for example , wake up very frequently . You may have bad dreams and wake up , or your phone may ring and you may have periods where you don't sleep until later or you may have trouble sleeping , trouble breathing , so that can affect also how much time you sleep in . Good sleep affect your sleep efficiency . So you may think that you spent nine hours , which is the actual total sleep duration , but the quality