4. Sleep
Yes, seriously.
Lack of sleep also contributes towards weight gain.
Or to put it another way, without the deep restorative non-rem sleep, (what we call deep sleep), your hormones will suffer, and you will disrupt your circadian rhythms.
Without much deep sleep, Cortisol (otherwise known as the stress hormone) will be released more into your blood, which also means that you will not be able to lose much belly fat, and you won't be able to build even lean muscle.
Lack of deep sleep also will throw your hormones Ghrelin and Leptin out of wrack (Ghrelin helps with your appetite and Leptin gives a signal to the brain that you no longer need food, i.e. you're full).
To help with your sleep, try to get to bed and fall asleep before 10pm.
Why?
Because between 10-12pm is when higher pulses of Human Growth Hormone is released.
The Research
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Increased body weight by as much as 55% in adults and 89% in children due to poor sleep. There is a high chance that your body mass is affected if you get, on average, less than 7 hours.
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The decision making part of your brain is affected with poor sleep. This makes making the correct choice difficult.
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After a meal, more calories were consumed in the form of snacks.
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Research involving 25 men and women, who were average weight, were shown to increase cravings for unhealthy food when sleep was 4 hours. More info here.
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High levels of Ghrelin may contribute towards weight gain, based on a 2014 experiment.
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An increase in hunger can also be caused by poor quality of sleep, making your fat loss more difficult.
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Your resting metabolism, crucial for loosing weight, is also affected.
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Your body cells will increase their insulin resistance due to lack of good sleep after just a few nights.
Possible Solutions
Sleep is a funny one (and this is coming from a former insomniac, of over 20 years).
To get your sleep, discipline is of vital importance. Yes, I know your life is stressful, but you have to find a way to manage that stress.
In fact, sleep is so important, I was considering in putting it number 1 on the list. (It snuck in here in the end, but there you go).
I have found that one of the best ways to practice discipline, as well as calming the stressful mind, is mindfulness meditation. There are a few apps that help you do that (I also recommend you check out, ‘The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, or try my app, ‘The Mindbeater‘. It's free to use).
A trick I recently learned was getting to bed 30 minutes earlier, every night.
Whilst I found initially, that I was waking up around the same time, that soon stopped, and I found out that I was waking up earlier and earlier. So successful was I in doing this, that I got up at 6:30am on Christmas Day, in 2020!
Also, try to also install Flux on your computer/laptop. This helps with dimming the lights and also activates certain hormones that help induce sleepiness.
Not going to lie, sleep is a tricky one to overcome. You do need to get into a regular sleep schedule, as a lack of sleep will seriously hinder your weight-loss efforts.
Click next to find out another weight-loss killer, that involves your own subconscious…
