Sleep Your Way To A Better Body

Don’t sabotage your weight loss.

In our quest to lose weight and ditch that unwanted body fat, most of us focus intensely on how we eat and exercise, and rightly so. However, by neglecting to consider the important role that adequate and good quality sleep plays in weight loss and limiting fat gain, you may inadvertently be sabotaging your efforts.

Science says...

One of the more recent studies conducted to unravel the link between sleep and our weight has found that losing just one night of sleep can have a tissue-specific impact on gene regulation and our metabolism.

According to the study findings, which were published in the journal Science Advances, sleep loss affects our metabolism by changing our body’s muscle and fat tissue composition – muscle loss is accelerated and fat tissue showed elevated levels of proteins and metabolites that are involved in promoting fat storage.

Staying awake all night also appeared to change the expression of several genes in fat tissue that are associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. These findings correlate with a large body of scientific research that links a chronic lack of sleep with an increased risk of obesity, insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes.

Hormonal imbalances

INADEQUATE SLEEP HAS ALSO BEEN DIRECTLY LINKED TO ELEVATED CORTISOL LEVELS, which is a powerful hormone that is released in response to stress (and a lack of sleep is a major stressor). Cortisol is catabolic, which means it breaks down muscle and accelerates bone loss, but it also increases fat storage.