Welcome to common sense weight loss advice from Boston’s (South End’s) best Personal Training studio.
Losing weight is hard. The human experience has drastically changed in our lifetime, and our bodies haven’t adapted yet. If only there were a few easy things we could do to help us lose weight…
Sleeping is easy
Believe it or not getting quality rest is essential to weight loss as well as weight maintenance. A synopsis of weight loss studies that monitored sleep (in addition to diet and exercise) found that better (less disturbed, more continuous), longer (7+ hours nightly) sleep increased the likelihood of meaningful weightloss by 33%.
But How
How does sleep improve weight loss outcomes? The reasons are myriad; let’s highlight a few.
- Sleep restriction increases hunger and appetite by altering metabolic and endocrine function; glucose and insulin sensitivity decreases and the evening levels of cortisol and ghrelin increase, while leptin decreases.
- Sleep duration may be associated with an increase in physiological hunger cues. Extending sleep duration past 6.5 hours for over 2 weeks resulted in participants consuming over 270 fewer daily calories.
- Sleeping only one fewer hour per night negatively altered fat metabolization.
- impaired sleep compromises serotonin (happiness hormone) production; that makes us more likely to reach for those sugary, salty foods that bump up serotonin production.
- Workouts get worse. Gym attendance, power output and recovery quality all decrease amongst the sleep deprived.
Remember…
You can’t lose weight properly while sleeping poorly. 70% of weight lost whilst sleeping poorly will come from lean muscle mass, not fat. When you’re under rested your body stubbornly holds on to fat.
But hustle culture says?
Hustle Culture says I’ll rest when I’m dead; sleep is for wimps; or that good things may come to those who rest, but only those things left by the hustlas.
Sleep, according to the hustlas, is lazy; You gotta grind 24/7.
Does it ever sound to you like hustle culture is over compensating for something?
Me, I’ll side with Dr Andrew Huberman who said, “Sleep is not a luxury; it is a non-negotiable biological necessity and the foundation of performance.”
Rest up my friends.