How Losing Weight Can Help You Sleep Better?

One of the most overlooked problems with getting great sleep is having too much body fat on your body. Being overweight causes severe stress to your internal organs, your nervous system, and disrupts your endocrine system. Endocrine system is responsible for producing hormones like melatonin, serotonin, and cortisol.

Research conducted by Deakin University in Australia showed that after consuming a meal, overweight individuals suffer with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. People with a healthy weight showed a five percent increase in cortisol levels after consuming a meal, while cortisol levels of overweight and obese individuals increased by a whopping 51 percent! These high cortisol levels translate to higher blood sugar, lower insulin sensitivity, and increased levels of inflammation.

The biggest issue is that cortisol is as close to an anti-sleep hormone. Having higher levels of these stress hormones in your body will inherently damage normal function, no matter what time of day the meal is eaten. However, it important to reduce weight as it is killing you softly.

Another critical issue is sleep Apnea which refers to a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing or infrequent breathing during sleep. Each pause in breathing, called an Apnea, can last from at least ten seconds to several minutes, and can occur from five to thirty times or more an hour. Basically, you stop breathing, and that results in abnormal blood pressure, depressed brain function, and dozens of other problems. Margaret Moline, PhD highlighted that, “As the person gains weight, especially in the trunk and neck area, the risk of sleep-disordered breathing increases due to compromised respiratory function.” The real solution of sleep Apnea is to reduce the excess weight from your body. 

If you’re focusing on cutting calories to lose weight, then you might as well go and buy yourself some larger-size clothes right now. Research shows that up to 70 percent of the weight you lose through traditional calorie restriction is coming from a loss of your lean muscle tissue. Your muscle is your body’s fat burning machinery. If you lose it through dieting, you will depress your metabolism, and set yourself up for long-term weight gain.
The problem is that people are thinking in terms of weight loss instead of body fat loss. People actually need to lose fat rather than weight. However, you have to incite your body to produce hormones that use stored body fat for fuel.

So how do we make this happen?

The first thing to understand is that you are either burning fat or storing fat. Your body’s major fat-storing hormone is insulin. You may think of it only in regards to diabetes, but it’s one of the most important hormones to your survival.

Insulin reacts to carbohydrates that includes bread, pasta, and potatoes, refined sugar products like cakes, candy, and soda, and even healthier carbohydrates like fresh fruit. To your body, it doesn’t matter. These carbs come in and insulin is turning on.

To shift your body into more of a fat-burning state, you need to put more of your focus on the other two macronutrient groups: protein and fat. A study published in the Journal of Nutrition showed that increasing protein intake led to enhanced weight loss and improved blood fat levels. And a study in the New England Journal of Medicine split 132 people (many of which had metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes) into either a low-carb group or a low-dietary fat group for six months. The low-carb group lost an average of 12.8 lbs while the low-fat group lost only 4.2 lbs. The lower-carb, higher dietary fat group literally lost three times as much weight!

I want to keep this on the topic of sleep as much as possible, so I’m not going to get into too much more detail here. If you’ve had a history of weight problems, or you simply want to be the leanest, healthiest version of yourself possible, then I highly recommend you head over and check out the Waist Reduction Quick Start Plan at here.

Eve Van Cauter, PhD, called sleep deprivation “The royal route to obesity.” Now understanding the fact that sleep deprivation decreases your insulin sensitivity, disrupts your hormonal cycles, and depressed your brain function, we know that her statement is 100 percent true. It’s time to put all the excuses to the side and give your body the sleep it requires to finally lose the weight and get the body and health you truly deserve.

Lose Weight While Sleeping Power Tip

If you really want to have something closer to bedtime, have a high fat, low-carb snack. This will ensure that your blood sugar stays stable. Whereas if you eat a higher carb snack before bed, your blood sugar will spike, and the impending blood sugar crash can be enough to wake you up out of sleep.

If you want to get truly restful sleep, one of the worst things you can do is eat right before bed (especially if you’re overweight, because cortisol levels go much higher). Give your body a solid 90 minutes (more is better) before heading off to bed after eating. Again, this is especially true if you’re eating carbs, because if you are asleep when hypoglycemia hits, it will likely wake you up and give you difficulties falling back asleep.