Why Good Sleep is Essential to Weight Loss
In the 80’s the ability to live with very little sleep was held up as some kind of badge of honour. The less sleep you needed, the more intelligent you were, and the more highly regarded you were.
But now the facts are clearly out, and we realise that a lack of enough quality sleep is a prime cause of lowered metabolic rate, overweight, illness and disease.
Sleep deprivation, whether deliberate or unintended, can be considered a relatively modern disease, interfering with the normal operation of all of the body’s systems and especially interfering with our metabolism. It’s our metabolic rate that determines whether or not we get fat on the food we eat, or burn it up to run our bodies efficiently.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old story from diet companies that losing weight is simply a matter of getting the right balance between the food you eat (energy in) and the energy you expend in activity (energy out). In fact this is nonsense, because if your metabolism isn’t operating as it should, you’ll struggle to lose weight no matter what you do.
There are many lifestyle factors that impact on metabolic rate, and sleep is one of them, so quality sleep is a crucial part of any serious weight loss program. The amount of sleep you need is unique to you, though probably it will be around 7 1/2 to 8 hours of good sleep each night. Of course kids need a lot more than that, often more like 12 or 13 hours of sleep nightly.
Quality sleep is even more essential in the journey to recover from any illness, including depression.
9 Tips to a Better Night’s Sleep
1 Guard your sleep time like the precious commodity it is. Who cares what other people think! I’m not talking about welching out on parenting duties at the expense of someone else’s sleep, of course! What I’m saying is don’t let other people’s expectations or selfish behaviour interfere with your sleep needs.
If sleep interruption is beyond your control (for example if you have small children or a sick partner who needs care during the night) make sure you get extra sleep during the day, and also make sure you get some nights off.
2 Have a routine. A time for slowing down in the evening, a time for going to bed, a time for waking up, a time for all of the activities you need to do in the day. Although you’ll obviously vary your routine from time to time, your regular routine will help to train your brain for efficient “shut down”.
3 Getting calm before going to bed. This means avoiding things that are stimulating to your body or brain, like loud or stressful television or music, arguments, caffeine or alcohol. Conversely you should use dimmed lighting, quiet background music, and laid-back conversation as a way to slow down and get ready for sleep.
4 Getting rid of stress from your life in general. When people suffer from repetitive thoughts at sleep time, with the mind turning over and over the same stuff, it’s generally because there’s an unacceptable level of stress in their lives. No-one needs to put up with this, especially with the advent of Logotherapy and NeuroStim, two relatively new techniques (see TopLifeSolutions.com for more information on these).
5 Is your bedroom actually conducive to good sleep? Is it quiet? Is it dark enough? Is there fresh air? Are your pillows, bed, and coverings, all comfortable and cosy? Do you feel safe and secure?
6 Don’t get up once you’ve gone to bed except for good reason. I’ve heard experts tell insomniacs not to stay in bed if they can’t sleep because they’ll end up associating their bed with their sleeping difficulties. Really this is rather illogical because bed is already associated with lots of things apart from sleep! My own advice is to stay in bed if it’s an appropriate sleep time in order to train your brain that this time of night means bed!
I claim that there’s obvious and unarguable evidence for my recommendation on this point, and you’ll see that for yourself immediately you think of the situation of training a baby or child into a good sleep routine. What would happen if each time the child struggled to go to sleep, you took the child out of bed and read him/her a book? Would that be a smart thing to do? No, didn’t think so!
This means that you can be confident that staying in bed is the best thing you can do to build better sleep habits.
7 You must be physically active during the day. Your body needs vigorous physical activity in order to properly produce sleep hormones. Mornings or early afternoons are the best times for you to play a sport, or go for that really brisk walk or bike ride.
8 Ensure you have great relationships with others: family, friends, colleagues, your neighbourhood. Quality relationships are essential to our wellbeing and we sleep so much better when our relationships are in a good state.
9 Enjoy good nutrition. In the end it’s the nutrients we take into our body that allow us to produce the hormones that allow good sleep.
About the Author:
There are 17 lifestyle factors which have a crucial impact on weight loss, so sleep is just one of them. The free book “17 Solutions” spells out each of them and tells you how to get them right! Available courtesy of the Kind Communities Initiative.
Tags: Fitness
