I know many people think, “I’m too busy to sleep, sleeping
doesn't make a difference in my weight loss goals.” But be warned, not getting
enough sleep makes you very hungry and increases your cravings for the worst
foods possible. How? According to a study published in the Public Library of
Science, impaired sleep causes leptin (your "I'm full" hormone) to go
DOWN by 15.5%. And it also causes ghrelin (your "I'm hungry" hormone)
to go UP by 14.9%.
This can send your appetite wildly out of control. You wake
up starving and completely useless until you can binge – and on the worst foods,
driving up your cravings for sugar, sweets and sugary carbs (breads, pasta, etc.)!
Leptin (the "I'm full" hormone) also controls your
metabolism by influencing your thyroid hormone. So when you don't get enough
shut-eye and leptin goes down, your thyroid also goes down, which causes your
metabolic rate (how many calories you burn at rest) to absolutely plunge.
The result? More of the food you eat gets parked on your
belly and thighs instead of being turned into energy to power you through the
day. And it gets worse... most people don't know that the majority of the
"fat burning" process actually happens when they sleep.
During sleep, leptin triggers specialized calorie-burning
fat cells to burn up excess calories that you don't need and to release that
energy as heat. So when you miss out on that deep sleep, you deprive yourself
of the prime fat burning window.
Sleep deprivation also depresses how sensitive your cells
are to insulin. If you are LESS insulin sensitive, you need to crank out MORE
insulin to clear any excess blood sugar that may be floating around. And more
insulin causes a double fat-making whammy by telling your liver to turn the
food you eat into fat and by locking fat in your fat cells so it can't be
released to be burned.
And yet another fat burning barrier occurs because your body
perceives lack of sleep to be a threat to its existence so it fires up your
stress hormone cortisol, which many people know has been directly linked to
excess belly fat.
Impaired sleep also damages your brain, cognitive abilities
and mood. Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, professor of neurosurgery at the University of
Rochester, completed a study showing that when we sleep, our brain flushes out
potent neurotoxins that are normal by-products of our waking activity.
But if you let those by-products accumulate without taking
out the garbage, bad things happen – like brain fog, impaired memory, wild mood
swings and trouble focusing. Inflammation and oxidative stress also run
rampant, causing even further damage to your brain and putting you at risk of
developing age-related diseases such Alzheimer's.
You ever see someone who hasn't gotten a good night's sleep
in a few days? They look ragged and strangely older. That's because lack of
good sleep ages you rapidly by robbing you of the small window of opportunity
during which your growth hormone is helping you re-build and repair and keep you
looking young.
Aside from making your skin wrinkly and dry, lack of growth
hormone also dramatically alters your body composition, shifting it to be more
fat and less muscle. So here's a few tips to getting more sleep:
- Go to bed 15 minutes earlier each week until you get to
7-9 hours of sleep.
- Make your bedroom completely dark, which maximizes your
hormonal response.
- Calm down your brain before bed – no TV, no internet, no
exercise, nothing.
- Eat (sensibly!) at least 3 hours before bed time –
anything less can negatively affect fat burning.
No comments:
Post a Comment