In “Rebellion (Lies),” Arcade Fire sings what most success-obsessed souls believe: “Sleeping is giving in / So lift those heavy eyelids.” Until about 10 years ago, I believed this also.

I took pride in starting many schooldays bleary-eyed and body aching simply because the alarm rang and the clock read 4:00 a.m. I had important things to do — meals to prepare, articles to write, papers to grade — before I exercised and then ate breakfast at school while fine tuning that day’s lesson.

It didn’t matter if I had the sniffles and a scratchy throat, exercised all-out for three days straight, or stayed up too late. Getting up that early — no matter what — became my badge of honor.

I thought spending more than the minimal amount of time asleep meant you were weak. Now I think getting the maximal amount means you are wise.

That change of view came primarily because of personal experimentation since study after study suggests sleep deprivation leads to decreased body function, an unfavorable mental state, and increased body weight. Recent research seemingly takes those suggestions and makes them seem like sure things — especially the last one.

Research performed at King’s College in London and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last January, in fact, could be summarized this way: Get more sleep; eat less processed sugar.

Much less if the results of the one-week study are projected over a full year. Nearly 15,000 calories.

Researchers had 21 healthy subjects, who hardly ever get the slightly more than the 7.5 hours of sleep a night that a 2014 Finnish study found to be optimal, listen to a 45-minute program on ways to increase sleep time. The 21 wore motion sensors and kept sleep logs as they tried to make that happen for the next 7 days.

While 18 of the 21 clearly spent more time in bed, only 3 subjects averaged more than 7 hours of sleep during the week. But the 45-minute presentation was deemed a success since about half the subjects increased their sleep time by 50 minutes or more.

Better still, all those who increased their sleep time by at least 50 minutes decreased carbohydrate consumption. While the researchers monitored food consumption over the 7 days carefully and the subjects were aware of that, they were not focused on altering their eating habits in any way.

The decrease in carb consumption occurred naturally with the increase in sleep.

More important than the overall decrease was the reduction of the carb type that’s seen as particularly harmful to your health: sugars added to processed foods. The average reduction for those who spent more time in bed came to 10 grams per day — or 15,000 calories when projected over a full year.

That change produces a weight loss of 4.1 pounds in a year — 41 pounds in a decade — and prompts Dr. Wendy Hall, one of the researchers, to say: “The fact that extending sleep led to a reduction in intake of free sugars, by which we mean the sugars that are added to foods by manufacturers, . . . suggests that a simple change in lifestyle may really help people consume healthier diets.”

But how simple is this change when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 out of every 3 adults are in serious need of more sleep and the organization goes so far as to call America’s collective lack of it “a public health epidemic”?

Moreover, a 2103 study performed at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that this “public health epidemic” plays a pivotal part in an even greater health concern: obesity. The study determined that adults consume about 500 more calories per day when sleep deprived as opposed to when they begin the day well rested.

The reason for the increase in calories is explained by a 2006 University of Michigan study published in Obesity Reviews that correlated a decrease in sleep with an increase in the secretion of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, and a decrease in the secretion of leptin, a hormone that suppresses it. Another hormone crucial to maintaining a healthy body weight is also affected by a lack of sleep.

Insulin.

Usually, someone who sleeps 6.5 hours or less a night produces 30 percent more insulin than someone who gets sufficient rest. The more insulin the body produces, the less sensitive the cells become to it, which lays the groundwork for insulin resistance, precursor to and part of type 2 diabetes.

But type 2 diabetes is not the only major health problem linked to years of insufficient sleep. Include high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, and — of course — obesity in that category. And all of these health problems share two inauspicious characteristics.

Not only do they significantly compromise the overall quality of life, but they also lessen the length of it.