Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

How Shitty Sleep Makes You Gain a Pound a Week 😴📉

31 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment of his YouTube video, Josh Trent explains that a night of very poor sleep removes the normal sleep pressure, triggering a surge in the hunger hormone ghrelin. This hormonal shift can cause an individual to consume an extra 250–500 calories the following day. When multiplied across a week, that surplus equals roughly 3,500 calories—the amount needed to gain one pound, leading Trent to conclude that chronic bad sleep can directly contribute to steady weight gain. A co‑speaker adds that eating behavior under exhaustion is driven by low energy, mood, and the body's drive to compensate for fatigue.

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when the sleep pressure is off and we get a really poor night's sleep, it can be upwards to like 250 to 500 calories more that you eat the very next day because there's an increased, um, ghrelin signal. The ghrelin hormone is released because of the exhaustion. When I heard that, I'm like, wait a minute, 3,500 divided by 5, I can gain a pound a week just from shitty sleep? That's when I knew that sleep was not to be messed with. Can you go into that?
Whenever I think about the reasons why people eat, especially when they don't want to, it comes down to how energetic are they or how exhausted are they. It comes down to their mood, right?