When we want to lose weight, we prioritize healthy eating and exercise but we tend to overlook one of the most important health decisions, sleep. Everything is more challenging on our bodies when we are sleep deprived.
Not to mention, lack of sleep will end up contradicting your efforts in diet & exercise. Inadequate sleep can obviously make you feel exhausted, but it also makes you feel hungrier, less satisfied when you do eat and less likely to exercise. A recipe for disaster!!
Why is sleep important to my weight loss?
If you are getting inadequate amounts of sleep you are affecting your body’s ability to effectively use insulin. Functioning insulin should assist the process of fat cells removing the fatty acids and lipids from your blood stream so it is not stored there.
When you become more insulin resistant, the lipids circulate in your blood and your body and release extra insulin. The excess insulin stores fat in in your tissues and liver (the wrong places).
Poor sleeping habits will also negatively effect multiple hormones in your body.
The most common include the stress hormone that is associated with fat gain, cortisol, which rises when you don’t sleep enough. Cortisol can also be blamed for the inability to “feel full.” It activates the reward center in our brains that make us want to eat. Additionally, the feeling of hunger is regulated by two hormones in our body: leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is produced in our fat cells.
The less you have, the less likely you are to feel full. On the other side, the more ghrelin you produce the more you stimulate hunger. High presence of ghrelin also slows your metabolism, ultimately reducing the number of calories you are burning daily and increasing the amount of fat stored.
Now that you know some of the negative side effects of inadequate amounts of sleep, make sleep a priority in your life. Getting at least 7 hours of sleep a day will benefit your weight loss program in many ways. Find a sleep schedule that helps you feel energized throughout the day and stick with it.
Call Tampa Rejuvenation today to learn more about the impact sleep has on your overall health. Individual results vary by patient. Ask your Tampa Rejuvenation practitioner about your specific health concerns.