What Sleep Has to Do with Weight Loss
July 3, 2008 – 11:56 pmIn 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.
Although there are an array of lifestyle factors that also affect metabolism and therefore affect weight loss, sleep is one of the most important, is crucial to your weight loss program, and crucial for permanent weight loss. Everyone has slightly different sleep needs, but most adults need between 7 and 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, while children (including older teenagers, no matter how loudly they protest) need more like 12 or 13.
Quality sleep is even more essential in the journey to recover from any illness, including depression.
9 Steps to Improve 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.
Sometimes our family responsibilities mean that our sleep is necessarily interrupted and every parent is very familiar with that! But make sure you catch up the next day, and that at least on some nights someone else takes turns being the “nightwalker”.
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 Make sure the environment in the bedroom is comfortable and supportive of great sleep. You want your bedroom to be nice and dark, and to be at least a little cool, with sufficient air flow. Check your bed and pillows to make sure they invite sleep rather than annoy you!
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!
There is quite good evidence for my recommendation to stay in your bed. For example if we’re helping a new baby to get into a good sleep routine, one of the things we do is try to keep them in their cot and provide as little stimulation as possible even if we have to give an extra bottle or change a nappy. The last thing we’d do is pick them up and go and sit in a bright room with a television on. That’d be teaching them to wake up!
So stay in bed, and use one of many proven relaxation techniques so that if you’re not sleeping, you’re at least training yourself to maintain a relaxed state - you’re at least “resting”.
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 Enjoy good relationships with everyone around you. If you have strained relationships, or adversarial relationships, this will detract from your sense of wellbeing and therefore will definitely impact on your sleep. Get your relationships in shape and you’ll enjoy much better sleep.
9 Enjoy a good, healthy diet with lots of variety. If you eat well your body is easily able to produce the hormones required for good sleep. Avoid fad diets like the extreme low-carb diet for example, because this robs the body of the ability to produce adequate melatonin (and also causes depression!).
Tags: Health and Fitness
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