The truth about your sleep and getting better results
What If i told you that the hours you sleep could be the reason you're not losing weight. That the thing that is holding you back from gaining muscle and losing fat is the amount of hours you sleep. The one thing we greatly under appreciate and has great benefits to our health is possibly the easiest one to control When it comes to building muscle not having enough time to recover will hold you back. I have had a lot of clients come to me frustrated because they feel they are doing everything to lose weight from logging their food and working out 5 to 6 days a week. So when I showed them how important it is to get adequate recovery it all started to come together and they were much happier. There was a study done where two groups were put on the same calorie deficit for two weeks group #1 slept 5.5 hours while the group #2 slept 8 showed some interesting results. On average they all lost the same weight however the the group that slept 8 hours lost 55% more fat and maintained 60% more muscle. This means that you could potentially be losing your gains or burning away muscle instead of fat. In fact to highlight this point another study that analyzed the effects of one night with no sleep was done with 15 males and the results showed that there were already elevated levels of protein breakdown in the muscles and elevated levels of protein and metabolites involved in promoting fat storage What other ways could less sleep affect you, less sleep could lead to lower leptin levels which is the hormone responsible of making you feel full. In turn raising the hormone levels of ghrelin the hormone responsible for making you feel hungry. No pantry or fridge is safe when you feel like this and what is likely to take a hit it's your waistline. Another issue with shortened sleep is you can become more insulin resistant meaning you will crave more sugar. Not to mention short sleep can be a risk factor for obesity. So it might start to make sense now when you wake up from a short night of sleep you crave something sweet or are just really hungry period. Where if you slept longer you could fast for longer helping your body be more efficient and elevate your metabolism. Here at LSL Fitness we plan everything from workouts to food to sleep and as you can tell by now sleep is a huge part of any program and it definitely is not taken lightly here. So my suggestion is start with going to sleep earlier and turning off all those distractions an hour before going to sleep. It's the steps you take with consistency that produce the greatest results.