The Association of Weight Loss and Sleep

Researchers have proven the connection of sleep with weight loss. According to the studies, if you sleep less than six hours, then you’ll be increasing your chances of being overweight or obese. The consequences of being obese are high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even cancers.

Perhaps, you have been wondering which comes first. Well, it turns out that they are just feeding off each other.

• A lack of sleep increases the chance of eating since you are awake. Why do you think midnight snack got invented in the first place?
• Sleeping less affects hormones that monitor feelings of hunger and fullness. If your body can’t tell whether you are hungry, you will have a hard time controlling you’re the portion of food that you eat.
• A lack of sleep lowers a person’s basal metabolic rate so that it could burn fewer calories than a similar person who sleeps more. Your body is slowing down so that it could recover from the previous day with inadequate sleep.
• Sleeping deprivation results to a lower energy that lowers the desire to exercise. Seriously, who wants to exercise when they feel sleepy?
• Sorry to say, your weight gain may affect your sleep. The excess weight reduces your breathing capacity; thus lowering the amount of oxygen you get as you sleep. Sleep disorders often occurs with obese people than in normal weight persons. Sleep apnea is a condition when the heart and lung has a hard time functioning.

As you gain weight, you’ll have a hard time sleeping, and you find it more difficult to sleep as you gain weight. What can be done about it? Here, are five powerful tips to help you sleep more than seven hours a night.

1. Never drink caffeine, eat chocolates or eat foods high in sugar after 2:00 in the afternoon. Conduct experiment with a cutoff time, but don’t forget that caffeine and sugars will keep you awake.
2. Stop watching TV in your bed and turn off your computer and cell phone an hour prior to the time that you want to sleep. Sound and visual stimuli will keep us awake. It would be difficult to sleep when your brain is still thinking about your electronics. Just turn them off so you could sleep. If you still can’t sleep then you can read, talk or meditate.
3. Experiment with the time you exercise. Try it in the morning and see if does raise your energy and helps you sleep. You could also exercise at night and see if that helps with sleep. Either way, exercise is going to utilize energy, burn calories and reduces stress.
4. Don’t do anything that will require you to use your brain. Write anything that must be done, and place them in a drawer for the next morning. Meditate and forget about the day’s problems.