Before I email a "Fitness Master" column to this paper, I proofread it a number of times. Yet even after I correct the grammatical errors, I sometimes struggle to hit the send button.

Not because I've written a second-rate article but because I've read a first-person narrative.Using personal stories generally gives me an uneasy butterflies-in-the stomach sensation. While I know that the best guidance I've ever received about teaching school, racing bicycles, and life in general has come from other people sharing theirs, I worry that your situation won't align closely enough with mine and the column won't be very helpful.After all, what percentage of "Fitness Master" readers are middle-aged bachelors who have the time and the desire to work out and cook healthy meals every day, keep journals about both, and read scientific study after scientific study to stay up to date with the latest developments in health and fitness?So as I proofread last week's column, the butterflies took internal wing once again. I had intended to write about how important timing is in many different health and fitness matters and cite studies to establish that, but instead you read about only one such situation: how the timing of sleep as much as the amount dictated energy level.But only from my perspective.So this week as a way to make amends and keep the butterflies at bay I'll cover the same topic but stick to research.For decades, research has demonstrated that a lack of sleep keeps you from performing at your best in physical or mental endeavors. Research done in the last decade or so has shown a link between insufficient sleep and weight gain.Most recently, a study presented this June at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, found that limiting late-night calories reduced the performance decline created by a lack of sleep.In this study, 44 subjects between the ages of 21 and 50 only slept from 4-8 a.m. for three nights but could eat whatever and however much they desired during the extended day. Each night at 2 a.m. the subjects were tested to measure memory, cognition, sleepiness, stress, and mood.On the fourth night, the study protocol changed. At 10 p.m. 24 of the subjects were instructed to eat no food and drink only water until the 4 a.m. bedtime. The 20 other subjects continued to eat at will.The same tests were administered at 2 a.m., but the results differed.Reaction times were better and attention lapses fewer in those who didn't eat after 10 p.m. compared to those who did. But what's as noteworthy is that those who ate on the fourth night also recorded slower reaction times and more attention lapses then they did on the first three nights, indicating that the adverse effects of sleep deprivation increase as they continue.While weight gain was not specifically addressed in this study which makes sense given its four-day duration senior author of the study, David F. Dinges, Ph.D,. director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry and chief of the division of Sleep and Chronobiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, did share with Medical News Today that adults usually eat an additional 500 calories a day when sleep-restricted.Compounding that caloric increase is another uncovered in another study Dinges' team presented at SLEEP 2015. Sleep deprivation created a decrease in morning basal metabolic rate significant enough to create weight gain if caloric intake is not reduced to compensate for it. BMR measures your energy expenditure while at rest, and prior studies have shown many factors affect it as well.Go on one of those insane, 400-calories-per-day diets, for instance, and your body reacts by reducing your BMR by up to 30 percent. In fact, even seemingly sensible reduced-calorie diets can often decrease your BMR by 20 percent.But there are also ways to raise BMR.Do 90 minutes of intense weight lifting, for example, and your BMR not only elevates immediately sometimes seven times above its norm and can still be elevated by up to 12 percent two hours later. Consume enough caffeine and you can create a similar increase for about the same amount of time.In the second study presented by Dinges' team, 36 healthy adults had lower basal metabolic rates after five nights of sleeping four hours than they recorded prior to the deprivation. To begin the study, the subjects were instructed to sleep their usual amount for at least two nights. A control group sleeping 10 hours a night when the others slept four recorded no change.After sleeping only four hours on five nights, the 36 subjects slept for 12 hours the next night. Testing the following morning showed that this night of "catch-up" sleep had returned their basal metabolic rates to the rates recorded before the sleep deprivation.