Once you pick up the right piece of ProForm equipment with our helpful discount code and start exercising regularly, you can kickstart your weight loss process. However, without the right balance of sleep, your weight loss journey can become stalled.
How Lack Of Sleep Affects Weight Loss
When it seems like there aren’t enough hours in a day, cutting back on your sleep often appears to be the best way to gain more time. But doing this can be seriously disruptive to your weight loss progress. Some specific ways this can occur are:
- Creates hormone imbalances – The hormone ghrelin is what tells your brain that you are hungry, and the hormone leptin is dispersed to signal that you are full. When you lack the proper amount of sleep, your body will make more ghrelin and less leptin, making you hungrier and more likely to overeat.
- May decrease resting metabolic rate – Our bodies burn a set amount of calories when completely at rest, which is dependent on gender, weight, muscle mass, height, and age. But when you don’t have enough sleep, your resting metabolic rate will drop, leaving you burning fewer calories.
- Lower energy levels – With lower energy levels, it can become tough to stick to your workout schedule, leading you to have less calorie-burning exertion or to skip your exercise routine entirely. This process will lower your daily calorie burn and slow down your weight loss.
Ways To Implement A Healthy Sleep Schedule
Since the lack of sleep can cause a lot of havoc on your weight loss progress, it is important to figure out ways you can implement a healthy sleep schedule. Some ideas we would suggest are:
- Make time to sleep 7-8 hours a night.
- Stick to a regular workout schedule. Be sure not to workout 2-3 hours before your bedtime or the hormones released by working out can keep you up.
- Put away any screens (smartphones, tablets, TVs, computers, etc.) at least an hour before bed.
- Set a steady sleep schedule, both your bedtime and wake up time, so your body becomes trained to become sleepy at the same time.
- Avoid long naps or ones late in the day. Ideally, a nap is no more than 30 minutes.
- Restrict the intake of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine late in the day.
- Eat only light snacks or a light meal a few hours before bed, as it can sit heavily as you sleep.
Once you have a good balance of sleep, exercise, and nutrition, you can make the best progress toward your weight loss goals.