Weight Loss Day 51
Day 51
If you’re like far too high a percentage of the population, then you’re probably getting less than seven hours of sleep per night. This can have a detrimental effect on your progress and undo the benefits of the efforts you’ve put into the 10 week challenge so far.
According to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, dieters were put on different sleep schedules. When their bodies received adequate rest, half of the weight they lost was from fat. However when they cut back on sleep, the amount of fat lost was cut in half—even though they were on the same diet. What’s more, they felt significantly hungrier, were less satisfied after meals, and lacked energy to exercise. Overall, those on a sleep-deprived diet experienced a 55 percent reduction in fat loss compared to their well-rested counterparts.
Being sleep deprived is never a nice feeling. Even worse though, it has so many knock on effects that really inhibit our bodies natural systems to function as we would like. Within just four days of sleep deprivation, your body’s ability to properly use insulin (the master storage hormone) becomes completely disrupted, with insulin sensitivity dropping by more than 30 percent.
What does that actually mean to me you might ask?
When your insulin is functioning well, fat cells remove fatty acids and lipids from your blood stream and prevent them from storing nasties where they shouldn’t be. When you become more insulin resistant, fats (lipids) circulate in your blood and pump out more insulin. Eventually this excess insulin ends up storing fat in all the wrong places, such as tissues like your liver. And this is exactly how you become fat and suffer from diseases like diabetes.
We’ve probably all been guilty at some stage of believing that losing weight is just a case of mind over matter, having enough willpower to get the job done. The reality is though, that our hunger is actually controlled by two hormones: leptin and ghrelin.
Leptin is a hormone that is produced in your fat cells. The less leptin you produce, the more your stomach feels empty. The more ghrelin you produce, the more you stimulate hunger while also reducing the amount of calories you burn (your metabolism) and increasing the amount fat you store. In other words, you need to control leptin and ghrelin to successfully lose weight, but sleep deprivation makes that nearly impossible. Sleeping less than six hours a night will actually trigger the area of your brain that increases your need for food while also depressing leptin and stimulating ghrelin.
When you don’t sleep enough, your cortisol levels rise. This is the stress hormone that is frequently associated with fat gain. Cortisol also activates reward centres in your brain that make you want food. At the same time, the loss of sleep causes your body to produce more ghrelin. A combination of high ghrelin and cortisol shut down the areas of your brain that leave you feeling satisfied after a meal, meaning you feel hungry all the time—even if you just ate a big meal.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse..
Lack of sleep also pushes you in the direction of the foods you know you shouldn’t eat, impairing activity in your frontal lobe, which controls complex decision-making.
Ever had a conversation like this?
“I really shouldn’t have that extra piece of cake… then again, one slice won’t really hurt, right?”
Turns out, sleep deprivation is a little like being drunk. You just don’t have the mental clarity to make good complex decisions, specifically with regards to the foods you eat—or foods you want to avoid.
This isn’t helped by the fact that when you’re overtired, you also have increased activity in the amygdala, the reward region of your brain. This is why sleep deprivation destroys all diets; think of the amygdala as mind control—it makes you crave high-calorie foods. Normally you might be able to fight off this desire, but because your insular cortex (another portion of your brain) is weakened due to sleep deprivation, you have trouble fighting the urge and are more likely to indulge in all the wrong foods.
Sleep deprivation has even been shown to make you select greater portion sizes of all foods, further increasing the likelihood of weight gain.
The bottom line: Not enough sleep means you’re always hungry, reaching for bigger portions, and desiring every type of food that is bad for you—and you don’t have the proper brain functioning to tell yourself, “No!”
Just as important, lack of sleep makes it harder for your body to recover from exercise by slowing down the production of growth hormone—your natural source of anti-aging and fat burning that also facilitates recovery. This happens in two different ways:
- Poor sleep means less slow wave sleep, which is when the most growth hormone is released.
- As previously mentioned, a poor night of rest increases the stress hormone cortisol, which slows down the production of growth hormone. That means that the already reduced production of growth hormone due to lack of slow wave sleep is further reduced by more cortisol in your system. It’s a vicious cycle.
If you're someone who doesn't particularly enjoy exercise, not prioritizing sleep is like getting a physical examine with your father-in-law as the investigating physician: It will make something you don’t particularly enjoy almost unbearable. When you’re suffering from slept debt, everything you do feels more challenging, specifically your workouts.
The Golden Rules of Sleep
Try and follow these basic 10 tips as often as you can to start to train your body and mind for a good nights rest.
1. Alcohol & good sleep don’t mix - avoid 2 hours before bed
2. No caffeine within 8 hours of bedtime, it shallows your sleep
3. If exercising at night, try to lower your body temperature before bed
4. Sleep in complete darkness or as close as possible
5. Avoid watching TV or the computer 30 minutes before bed
6. If you often lay in bed with your mind racing, write down what you need to do the next day before getting to bed
7. Take a hot shower or bath 15-30 minutes before bed
8. Keep the temperature in the bedroom no higher than 21ºC
9. Try not to eat or drink anything within a few hours of bed
10. Regular Exercise! This helps increase your desire to sleep
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