Losing weight is often/always perceived as something tedious, difficult and restrictive. However, if you follow this great little tip, it will be much easier for you to reduce your waistline! And it's not running longer on a treadmill or counting the number of salad leaves you eat… it's simply getting more sleep!
Sleep more? Seriously? How can sleeping make me lose weight when it cuts into my cardio time and the number of times a day I step on the scale to make sure I'm on track? In fact, sleep deprivation is a scourge that reaches the vast majority of the population. Over the past 100 years we have lost an average of almost 2 hours of sleep per night! Imagine what that means over a whole year! 2h X 7 days X 52 weeks = 378 hours less sleep per year. Sleep is essential for many of the body's "repair" tasks, regulation of hormones, blood sugar levels, etc. So imagine if you took away 378 hours per year to do all these tasks. If we take an example from everyday life, what would you say if your boss told you that, due to budget cuts, you will now have to do the same amount of work as before but he takes away 14 hours per week to do it. Doesn't that sound a little unrealistic? Well, that's what we put our bodies through day after day.
Let's keep it simple so we don't get into the nomenclature of hormones and reactions that won't help us understand what's going on anyway. Our days are now so long that the message sent to the body is that it is summer all year long. Ok, I want to believe that when we go outside these days we quickly realize that it is not summer, but for the body, the amount of light, whether natural or artificial, makes it believe that the sun is present 16 hours a day. Such long days only happen in nature when it is summer and the days are the longest. So what message does this send? It is time to store energy before the short winter days arrive. The hormones in the system are those responsible for storing fat, not those responsible for using it for energy. In addition, other hormones responsible for controlling our appetite are less present because it is time to stock up and not to deprive ourselves. So we are hungry all the time!
Our sugar levels are completely out of whack, creating energy and sleep problems that lead to this whole chain of negative events over and over again. This leads to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and almost everything else you can imagine!
So the first step in a good weight loss program should be to simply get a good night's sleep! Go to bed around 10-10:30pm and sleep for about 8 hours! Simple enough right? And very pleasant!
