Can I Burn Calories in My Sleep? You can and you do!
Everyone has a basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the number of calories your body burns just to stay alive and functioning. Even when you’re asleep, your body is working hard to support essential processes like breathing, circulating blood, regulating body temperature, and repairing tissues.
In fact, 60–70% of the calories we burn each day are largely out of our control. Factors such as genetics, sex, height, and age all play a role in determining BMR. While we can’t change these factors, there are steps we can take to support a healthy metabolism and prevent it from slowing down over time, or worse, stopping altogether!
How to Support Your Basal Metabolic Rate
1. Build Muscle Through Exercise
Muscle tissue requires more energy to maintain than fat tissue. This means that the more lean muscle you have, the more calories your body burns, even at rest and during sleep.
Resistance training, such as weight lifting, bodyweight exercises, or physical therapy–guided strengthening, helps stimulate muscle growth and maintenance. As your muscles repair themselves after exercise, your metabolism remains slightly elevated, supporting calorie burn well beyond your workout.
2. Spend More Time Outdoors
Your body works constantly to maintain a stable internal temperature. When you’re exposed to warmer or cooler environments,such as being outdoors,your body must use additional energy to regulate itself.
Whether it’s hot or cold, mild temperature variation encourages your metabolism to stay active. Simple activities like walking outside, gardening, or exercising outdoors can provide gentle metabolic stimulation while also supporting cardiovascular health and overall well-being.
3. Make Sure You Eat Enough
One common mistake people make when trying to lose weight is drastically cutting calories. When your body senses prolonged calorie restriction, it may interpret this as food scarcity and enter a “survival mode.”
In response, your metabolism can slow down to conserve energy, making it harder to burn calories, even at rest. Adequate nutrition supports hormone balance, muscle maintenance, and normal metabolic function.
Eating enough to fuel your daily activities, recovery, and sleep is essential for keeping your metabolism working efficiently.
Bottom Line
Proper rest and sleep are essential to restoring natural and necessary function of the body, and also provide a way for us to burn calories. While many aspects of metabolism are outside of our control, maintaining muscle mass, staying active, and fueling your body properly can help support a healthy basal metabolic rate that can be achieved during sleep.
By focusing on strength, movement, and recovery, especially with guidance from healthcare professionals like Stoneking Physical Therapy, you can help your body function better both during the day and while you rest at night. Stoneking Physical Therapy & Wellness Center is located in Ewing, NJ and you can reach them at 609-883-7528.