Importance of sleep and my solution to sleeplessness
"Eat better and exercise more is not everything".
We are often forgetting other important tools and one of them is good sleep. Studies confirmed that improving our sleep really can help us lose weight and is necessary for healthy functioning too.
Evidence https://www.webmd.com/diet/sleep-and-weight-loss#1
Image from: https://www.meaningfulminds.co.za
Unfortunately 1 in 3 adults get less than 7 hours sleep ( that’s me 🙋♀️) and they are struggling to lose weight!
According to American Academy of Sleep Medicine we should be sleeping for at least 7 hours.
Evidence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434546/
Unfortunately I am one of those who get less then 7h sleep and most days I feel like even my coffee need a coffee😁
Night time for me is about reading my fave books and articles. I really don’t want to sleep but it affects my day so badly that I am willing to change this.
Here 👇is some important facts about sleep:
🍽Poor sleep can increase appetite. This is happening because of our 2 hormones Leptin and Ghrelin.
LEPTIN- leptin is involved in the regulation of appetite, metabolism and calorie burning. During sleep, leptin levels increase, telling your brain you have plenty of energy for the time being and there's no need to trigger the feeling of hunger or the burning of calories. When you don't get enough sleep, you end up with too little leptin in your body, which, through a series of steps, makes your brain think you don't have enough energy for your needs. So your brain tells you you're hungry, even though you don't actually need food at that time.
GHRELIN- The purpose of ghrelin is basically the exact opposite of leptin: It tells your brain when you need to eat, when it should stop burning calories and when it should store energy as fat. During sleep, levels of ghrelin decrease, because sleep requires far less energy than being awake does. People who don't sleep enough end up with too much ghrelin in their system, so the body thinks it's hungry and it needs more calories, and it stops burning those calories because it thinks there's a shortage.
Without adequate sleep our body makes more ghrelin and less leptin which is giving us the feeling of hunger and increased appetite.
🙅♀️🙅♀️Sleeping longer helps you fight cravings and make healthy choices. It’s harder to resist temptation when we feel tired so instead of reaching for extra bar of chocolate think of going to bed early!
Evidence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112413/
🍔🧁🍦Poor sleep can increase your calorie intake which is not what we want when we are trying to lose weight. It all comes from those cravings of extra bar of chocolate you didn’t now why you needed it so bad or simply by poor food choices because you don’t have enough energy to cook.
Image from: https://www.myoleanfitness.com
🙁😖😣🙍♀️Lack of sleep is causing day time fatigue. We feel less motivated to do anything, especially exercising. Improving sleep can definitely help to change this!
😴😴😴😴😴Sleep helps prevent insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar from the bloodstream into your body’s cells to be used as energy. When cells become insulin resistant more sugar remains in bloodstream and our body is starting to produce more insulin to compensate!
The excess insulin makes us hungrier and tells the body to store more calories.
Bottom line: Eating less, moving more and getting a good night sleep is important part of well-being .We should be getting in 7-9 hours of quality 😴per night to curb cravings and restore normal hormone function.
Image from:
http://www.funnybeing.com
How I am going to solve my sleeplessness?
I need 8h sleep, I tested this before and 7h is not enough for me. I need to be awake by 6:30am so I should be asleep by 10:30pm at the latest!
I will set alarm o’clock to go to bed at 9:30 to do my reading and checking in with you here😉I shouldn’t be using my phone in bed but I am not going to lie to you, this is not going to change😬. All I want is just to develop a new healthy habit of sleeping full 8h.
If my busy mind will wake me up again at night, I will practice mindfulness breathing technique. I do this all the time and it helps me go back to sleep within 10 min, before i learnt this,It took about an hour to fall back sleep again!
If you want to know more about mindful breathing technique here is a good link to read: https://www.mindful.org/a-mindfulness-practice-for-better-sleep/
This really requires some time to learn but like anything else in this world, the more we practice the better we get.
The point of doing this, is to help me acknowledge my thoughts without any guild or other emotional attachment and come back to present moment which is tuning with my breathing. Breathing quickly calms my mind and helps me relax.
If you don’t like reading ,here is guided meditation for beginners. You can do this before bed time
If you don’t like this one, there are plenty more on you tube, just search: breathing mindfulness meditation for beginners
-Overall my plan for next few days of my slimming challenge is to sort my sleeping patterns and eat well.
- Learning to recognising real hunger over “tired hunger”
- Continue weightlifting, do less cardio if my sleep will not improve!
Have a good night sleep everyone😴😁