Fix Your Sleep to Fix Your Weight
Fix Your Sleep to Fix Your Weight
“Get a good night’s sleep” is often the last thing we say to family members at bedtime. That phrase may mean more than we originally thought. Sleep is now considered to be the best and simplest way to beat the battle of the bulge by losing weight and keeping it off.
The Sleep diet has nothing to do with food – and everything to do with getting healthy by stabilizing hormones and balancing metabolism. These two factors are essential to your overall health and can prevent diabetes and heart disease.
Studies about sleep continue to grow – and 2018 will reveal even more about how our sleep habits affect our health. Research has already revealed that sleep restriction causes an overload of stress hormones and prevent your metabolism’s ability to function properly.
Lack of sleep also causes an extreme decrease in the hormone, leptin. Leptin regulates your fat storage and can cause weight gain. Ghrelin is also a hormone that has much to do with an increase in appetite. Lack of sleep increases the presence of that hormone in your body and can cause overeating.
Studies show that there is a definite connection between sleep time and weight gain. If you sleep less than five hours or more than nine hours per night, your chances of weight gain are increased.
Your body views excess weight as a holding tank for energy, so when you’re tired the body piles on more fat to get the energy you need. The remedy for fatigue and weight gain is – sleep.
It’s important that you get enough sleep and that it’s quality sleep to get the weight loss results you want. Food diets often don’t work because they’re restrictive and make extreme changes to the foods you eat.
That’s when cravings occur and you give in only to gain more weight. The sleep diet doesn’t work like that. It can work very effectively to shed pounds – but there are certain rules you must follow to make it work.
You can try the sleep diet for a week to see how you fare. First, you must know how much sleep you want each night. What would your bedtime be if you set your desired number of hours to 8? Now, stick to that time.
It may be more difficult than you think. You should give up alcohol and sweets that might keep you awake at night during the sleep diet so you can get an accurate reflection of how the diet will work for you.
Studies up to now indicate that constant sleep deprivation might increase cravings for high-calorie foods. Women who are sleep deprived have much more chance of gaining weight than those who slept at least seven hours per night.
Sleep is a great benefit for your body. You’ll feel less fatigued and it will be much easier to stick to consuming healthy foods. Do what you need to do to get a good night’s sleep and you’ll rest easy knowing you’re doing the best thing for your body.
