How many hours of sleep do you get every night? 5? 6? 7? How many pounds do you really need to lose? 5? 15? 50?
Guess what? Both of these amounts go together.
So a lot of my clients are horrible sleepers. They can not fall asleep because their heads are rushing or they drop asleep but can’t stay asleep. Or they wake to use the toilet and drift into the kitchen at 3AM. Or they sleep OK, but wake exhausted. And they finally wind up in my office, requesting diet programs and the way to shed weight. This is yet another example where I preach,”It’s not only about the food!”
“Sleep deep” is really a Nutritious Life pillar because how many hours of sleep you get affects your wellbeing and midsection as much as the healthy foods you eat, the workout you practice and the strain you manage does.
Watch, sleep deprivation messes up the hormones that regulate hunger, causing an increase in appetite and particular cravings for calorie-dense, high-carbohydrate foods. So after a very long night, there is indeed a reason you are reaching for the bagel and cream cheese at 7am as opposed to your normal healthy breakfast of hard boiled eggs and berries.
Along with levels of ghrelin — the hormone which says”consume more”– jump 28 percent. Again, there is a reason you can not stop chowing after pulling an all-nighter.
Now remember this happened after just 2 nights of sleep deprivation…just imagine what happens after weeks and weeks of missing sleep! No wonder that your pants are tight, right?!
So, how many hours of sleep do you want to be the safest you possible?
If you only get 6 hours, your risk of developing obesity increases 23%, in the event that you just get 5, it increases 50%, and if you only get 4, then it increases a whopping 73 percent!
The thing is, if you want to improve your sleep, you’ve gotta operate on your nighttime behaviors, like you practice brushing and flossing or cutting and washing veggies and fruits right once you get home from the supermarket.
What can you work on to better your shut eye?
Should you wake up to pee, stop drinking 2 hours before bedtime and try to go right until you turn in at evening.
Should you fall asleep, but wake up a couple of hours afterwards, give up all alcohol for a couple of days and see if it helps, or melt your biggest frustrations in a journal promptly before you turn into quiet your mind.
If you’re sleeping, but not feeling rested, then reverse your mattress, adjust the temperature in your bedroom, buy yourself new cushions or invest in snore-strips for the wake-the-dead, apnea contested partner. If you’ve flipped the mattress which is not functioning, I will let you in on a secret — spend in an Essentia mattress. They’re the sole natural memory foam mattress available and I am telling you, you’ll sleep like a babe.
Can not fall asleep? Ditch the caffeine after noon time and workout in the morning, rather than the evening.
Tonight, I would like you to stare in the inside of your eyelids together with the curtains drawn, in your favorite jammies, along with your iPhone silenced, no matter what. Stop making lists in your thoughts or preparing for tomorrow’s presentation or folding the laundry. Tonight is about sleep. That’s it.
If you sleep well, you’ll eat a better breakfast daily, which might motivate you to eat a much better lunch, which might inspire you to hit the gym, which could make you sleep much better tomorrow night, which might help you drop those pounds you’ve been struggling with.