Sleeping and weight loss
Proper sleep is necessary for staying healthy. If you are not getting enough sleep, many of the vital functions aren’t carried out properly and as a result, you may suffer from illnesses, improper digestion, dizziness, headache and more. If you are on a weight loss mission, getting enough sleep is even more important than ever.
Its been said that more than 40% of Americans get just 6 hours of sleep or even less. If you are among those, you are already flailing your own weight loss efforts. If you are sleeping less than seven hours per day, you are more likely to gain weight.
Sleep deprivation can affect your weight. Lack of sleep causes your brain to make bad decisions and thus, the activities on the frontal lobe of your brain slow down and overtires you. This results in food cravings in order to gain a quick shot of energy, which you may have rejected if you were well rested. A a research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that people who were starved of sleep were more likely to get a late night snack and on top of that, they were more likely to pick high carbohydrate foods. All of these things are direct contributors to weight gain.
Another study conducted on a similar subject showed that sleeping less than what’s necessary for the body prompts people to eat bigger portions of foods, particularly high carbohydrate foods. A sleep deprived brain also can’t resist the saying no to foods.
Getting enough sleep can help you lose weight; there is even a thing called sleep diet which implies that you can lose weight while sleeping.
Sleeping, weight gain and hunger hormones
A minimum of 7-9 hours of sleep is required by your body everyday. Sleeping less than that will cause your body to act in strange ways. Lack of sleep impacts your fullness hormones known as ghrelin and leptin. Grehlin is the hormone that is supposed to tell your brain that its time to get some food. Leptin is the hormone that tells the brain not to eat more. Lack of sleep causes your body to produce more ghrelin and less leptin. As a result you will want to eat more and stop eating less. Thus lack of sleep can directly contribute to your eating habits and make you eat a lot more than usual.
Sleeping burns more calories
Your body burns calories even when you are not working out. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that normal sleeper’s spend more energy(and hence burn more calories) when they are not moving, compared to their sleep deprived counterparts. A person getting sufficient sleep is able to burn more calories per meal than a sleep deprived person.
Sleeping enables you to burn more fat than other nutrients
A study conducted to compare the results of weight loss between a person sleeping eight and a half hours a day and another person sleeping five and a half hours per day showed that the one who got more sleep burned more fat. Both ate same number of calories per day. Although the number of pounds shedded by either group of people were similar, the group that got ample sleep tended to have more than half of that lost weight, in the form of fat.
One thing to understand is that sleeping a lot doesn’t mean you will lose weight. But if you are sleep deprived, your metabolism will be hampered.
If you are not getting enough sleep on a daily basis, start getting yourself a decent amount of sleep to aid your weight loss efforts. You should get at least 7.5 hour a day sleep. However, besides the length of sleep, sleep hygiene is also very important. Doing proper exercise is one of the best ways to have a better sleep quality. Also, avoid coffee during the afternoon because it is one of the major contributors to poor sleep quality.
Sleeping is one of the most important factors that affect weight gain or weight loss. If you are committed to losing extra pounds, make sure to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep everyday. Couple that with a healthy balanced diet, daily exercise and there’s no stopping you. If you want to achieve the results faster, you might as well try on with some supplements, that won’t bring about any side effects. One of the best natural supplements to boost your weight loss efforts is colostrum. Colostrum, produced by bovines during pregnancy is a great natural product with lots of health benefits, one of them being weight loss. If you want to supplement colostrum to your daily diet, remember to buy quality colostrum products such as the ones produced by Immune Tree. Immune Tree’s colostrum products such as the colostrum 6.5 oz powder, colostrum kilo powder are considered among the best in the industry. Click here to learn more about ImmuneTree’s colostrum.