Sufficient sleep is essential in losing weight. For an adult, this means between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, depending on a person's individual sleep needs.
In addition, it is also important to maintain a steady bio-rhythm, which means keeping regular sleep times. For example: get into your bed at 10 p.m. sharp every night and the alarm clock at 7 a.m. sharp every morning. But why is adequate sleep and a regular bio-rhythm so important for losing weight?
Ghrelin and leptin production
Sleep greatly affects the production of various hormones in your body. The two hormones that play a major role in your sense of hunger are leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is produced by your fat cells and plays a role in suppressing your feeling of hunger. After a bad night of sleep, the production of this hormone decreases, so you may experience more feelings of hunger.
Ghrelin works the opposite way, this hormone actually stimulates feelings of hunger. If you have slept badly, your body makes more of this hormone. The result: you have a much greater need to eat throughout the day. Conversely, after a good night's sleep you feel less need to eat.
Stress hormones
Too little sleep increases our cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stimulating, warning hormone. It is the body's main stress hormone and it stimulates our fight-or-flight mode. When the body is in fight-or-flight mode, the brain gets a signal that extra energy is needed and you start eating more. That's fine if you actually use that energy. But those who are tired tend to be less active as well. This means that you are not burning those extra calories, but rather storing them! Of course, that doesn't help if you want to lose weight.
Growth hormone and muscle mass
The production of cortisol also has another disadvantage: it works against the production of our growth hormone. This stops recovery of your muscle tissue, among other things, and gives your muscles less of a chance to grow. Less muscle mass means that your metabolism becomes slower, which means you will gain weight faster in the long run.
Organ fat
Too little sleep, in addition to affecting your appetite and muscle mass, also affects how fat is stored. With enough sleep, your body produces insulin when your blood sugar goes up. With the help of that hormone, your fat cells can absorb the excess sugars and the extra energy is stored as fat.
With insufficient sleep, however, those fat cells are less sensitive to insulin. They then store less sugar. Instead, some of the excess sugars get to your organs, where they take care of building up your organ fat (visceral fat). Organ fat is the most unhealthy form of body fat and can interfere with your fat burning. This can send you into a negative hormonal spiral where your body will only store more fat. In addition, higher levels of organ fat cause higher cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart attack.
Control over impulses
Finally, sleep affects your motivation and impulse control. Research shows that people with sleep deprivation often make significantly less sensible food choices.
They are simply less able to control their eating impulses! In addition, they also have less energy, so that planned exercise class is quickly cancelled. Poorer eating combined with less exercise is, of course, the formula for weight gain and that's exactly what we don't want!
So that good night's sleep is really important, especially if you're in the process of losing weight! But what can contribute to a good night's sleep?
A regular evening ritual helps prepare for sleep and optimizes your bio-rhythm. A good evening ritual increases the production of the hormone melatonin and helps you fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. We therefore share a NewFysic evening ritual that will hopefully help you get a good night's sleep!
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