Doctors are seeing a correlation with their patients between sleep problems and weight issues. While the two can be independent complications in a people’s lives, they do often intertwine to create double trouble.
Just like eating healthily, sleeping healthily need time and focus too. There are some interesting links between weight issues and sleep that we will look at shortly, but it’s firstly worth mentioning that if you are suffering from both these problems in your life, they are not permanent and you can overcome them with some sound advice and by making some informed changes too, which is what you can look at below.
Staying healthy in a range of ways will really help to kickstart this, and once you are on the right path, you will be able to move forward and maintain a healthy life. So, let’s see what you need to do to eradicate those weight/sleep issues, shall we?
How does sleep (or lack of it) affect your weight and the loss of it?
Sleep can be used as an effective tool to reach weight loss goals. If utilised in a responsible way, i.e. not taking unprescribed sleeping pills, sleep is your friend when it comes to facilitating good health and the maintenance of a healthy weight too, which factors in the loss weight if applicable.
There’s no magic in this formula whatsoever, it’s simply about putting your head on the pillow for the required amount of time, which for adults is between seven and nine hours a night. Make sure your sleep is high-quality with mattresses from the Sleep Advisor and try not to oversleep or this can have detrimental effects as well.
There are a number of ways in which low-quality sleep, and not getting enough sleep, can lead to a rocky road when it comes to sticking to a healthy weight consistently.
How sleep affects metabolism
Without a decent sleep in your life, the body’s metabolism will slow down. Your metabolism is responsible for converting calories into energy. It’s been shown that low-standards of sleep results in the body’s metabolism becoming less effective in its role. The upshot of this is that there will be unwanted energy stored in the body but as fat.
Calories galore!
insufficient levels of sleep, and poor sleep, in general, cause your body to store up the calories you intake as fat, and it’s because of bad sleep that the body can end up producing increased amounts of both cortisol (a stress-related hormone) and insulin.
Greater insulin levels in the body are associated with cells in your body absorbing too much glucose (sugar) from your blood. What’s more, studies suggest that your body can then begin to store energy as fat, particularly in the abdomen region.
Hormones run wild
Another problem with not getting enough good-quality sleep is that your appetite spikes. Don’t allow yourself enough sleep, and changes in hormones will occur; these changes regulate to your hunger and general feelings of just how full you think you feel.
A hormone called ghrelin, linked with your body’s ability to stimulate hunger, will become more prevalent. Together with this, leptin, a hormone that encourages feelings of fullness, is suppressed.
That’s not all either, as the hormone changes just keep coming, with poor sleep taking the blame for alterations in serotonin levels. Serotonin influences help you to maintain your moods; so, you won’t feel down, and you won’t feel constantly peckish either.
Mentioning cortisol again; increased amounts of this hormone deliver a message to the brain, calling for more serotonin, is often believed to be one of the reasons why you have hankerings for carbs and fat, due to the fact that they release serotonin.
It’s regularly seen that people tend to make less healthy food choices when they get poor sleep, and it’s also been proven low-quality sleep increase cravings for fat, starchy carbs and sugar. Additionally, late night snacking comes into the equation when people haven’t had the decent levels of sleep they require.
Consuming too many calories of an evening can move people into the realms of struggling to deal with weight control, and with calories taken on board at night more likely to end up stored as fat, it’s wise to avoid this bad habit and engage in sound slumber instead.
With vast amounts of educated and informed health experts concentrating their approach to deal with bad sleep quality and diet choices, there’s little wonder the links between not sleeping enough and having weight issues are continually being explored and examined.
In many Western societies, insufficient sleep is at an epidemic-style level. So, the next time you think missing out on a few hours’ sleep each night won’t make a difference, you’d be well-informed to think again!
