Many of us would immediately think of diet and exercise when we want to drop a few pounds. We hit the gym, and meticulously count calories, and yet, the scale sometimes refuses to budge. How would you feel if I said there is a missing part to your ‘weight loss’ puzzle? Unbeknown to you, sleep is one such hidden factor. Yes! Sleep-a good night’s rest could be one of the secret weapons for your weight-loss mission.
This article discusses why sleep is by far one of the most vital components of your health as well as your weight loss journey. It will provide some pointers about how you could aid in the improvement of your sleep quality and fat-burning efficiency. Ready to unleash the ultimate power in your weight loss plan? Let’s get started.
The Role of Sleep in Weight Loss: How Sleep and Weight Loss Are Connected
There is a genuinely profound link between sleep and weight loss. Truly, poor sleep can compromise your weight loss efforts in unexpected ways.
1. Hormonal
Affect: How Sleep Deprivation Causes Hunger. Do you know that your sleep habits can impact your hunger levels directly? It is all about two hormones: ghrelin and Leptin the two players in charge of regulating hunger and fullness.
Ghrelin, the “hunger hormone,” puts a signal to your body regarding feeding time. Since you’re depriving yourself of sleep, the ghrelin levels shoot up, and this leads you to a perpetual state of hunger. Have you ever noticed that, after a bad night of sleep, you always crave sugary snacks or want that extra slice of pizza? Yep. You’re welcome, Ghrelin!
Leptin is the signal that your brain gets with a woof-like being filled and should cease eating. Unfortunately, when you sleep less, leptin may plummet. The result would be: that your brain doesn’t get the clue that you’re full, which initiates overeating.
This essentially means that if you are not getting sufficient sleep, your body is giving mixed signals that make it very difficult for you to resist cravings and control portion sizes. Imagine dieting while your body tricked you into thinking you were on the verge of starvation: That is a fight that never wins!
2. Sleep and Your Metabolism: A Sluggish Burn
The metabolism works as a furnace to burn calories during the whole day, but did you know that not sleeping could lower its efficiency? You may wake up sluggish and slow, but the way your body processes and stores energy is affected because of the poor sleep.
When you’re sleep-deprived, your body doesn’t use insulin well, which is the hormone that helps your cells absorb the glucose (sugar) present in the bloodstream. This leads to a dangerous condition. This causes the development of insulin resistance and makes the body lay on fat around the abdominal region.
Even worse was that studies have shown that you burn fewer calories throughout the other day. So while you’re sweating off the gym, your body’s metabolism might be working against you if you’re not catching enough Z’s.
3. The Exercise Factor: How Sleep Affects Your Workout Performance
Muscle Recovery-Deep sleep provides an environment where the body works its best to repair and rebuild muscle. This is important after a particularly tough workout. If you compromise sleep, your muscles won’t recover properly and instead will leave you sore and fatigued, tending to injuries. Repeated lack of recovery can slow you down in regard to how often and how hard you can exercise and therefore slow progress in weight loss.
Energy Levels-Truly attempted laying off the workouts due to lack of sleep? You’ll know exactly how terrible it feels! A drained battery is one thing that sleeplessness has on you: drained and easy to be persuaded to take on a worthless workout. When sufficiently restful, energy levels rise up well and you can push your workouts harder, thus burning more calories and getting rid of more fat sooner.
4. Mental Fortitude: Sleep and Your Ability to Make Smart Choices
As is seen, at 15h on that day, you are in a state of complete fatigue. All you have to do is satisfy your longing for a sugary hit for the end of the day. If it is a question of resisting such an offer after a long and sleepless night, the odds are pretty thick. Simply put, when you are tired, the judgment portion of your brain, which relies on frontal lobe activity to make decisions and exercise self-control, is affected.
Fatigue lowers your inhibitions against unhealthy foods and leads your brain to seek that quick energy fix in the form of calorically dense sugary junk foods. This, of course, turns into an accumulation of poor food choices over time, which may end up negating a lot of the hard work you have put into diet and exercise.
Sleep Your Way to Weight Loss: How to Improve Your Sleep Quality
With cognizance of the importance of sleep in weight loss, you must be questioning now how you can start getting better sleep beginning this very night. Well, don’t worry; we have provided for you a few easy science-based tips.
1. Stick to a Sleep Schedule
Our body has an internal clock known as the circadian rhythm, which controls our sleep-wake cycle. By sleeping and getting up at the same time daily, you are better able to regulate this cycle of sleep, thus making it easier to fall asleep and awaken completely renewed.
Note: Try to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, and adhere to a regular sleep schedule–even on weekends!
Create a Calming Bedtime Routine
Your brain needs a little help to unwind at the end of a long working day. A good bedtime routine can tell your body it’s time to wind down a little for sleep.
Practical tip: For about an hour before bed, lower the light, and do activities that will relax you, like reading, listening to soft music, or taking a warm bath. During the hour before sleep, avoid screens, considering that the blue light emitted by them inhibits the melatonin production hormone that helps you sleep.
