Your Fitness: Is sleep hurting your fat loss goals?
A good night's sleep is extremely important.
Something I feel is often overlooked when it comes to many people’s fitness goals is how much time people put into their sleep hygiene, which is often minimal in comparison to the effort contributed towards someone’s training and nutrition.
Instead, people will often be chasing the next best supplement, as they feel that is what they need to start making progress.
Oftentimes, in reality, it is our sleep that can be the one variable that is causing problems when it is not being addressed.
In this article I hope to offer some advice on why sleep may be hindering your fitness journey.
After a poor night’s sleep, you might have noticed that you find it much harder to stick to your diet.
Convenient and more palatable foods become much more of a temptation.
Energy is low, cravings for sugar and more calorie dense foods rise.
Studies carried out looking at the effects of sleep restriction on dietary intake provide some consensus on the mechanisms where alterations in hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin are reported to contribute to these responses.
Sleep loss has also been associated with poor performance where strength, skill and endurance have been reported to be negatively affected.
Making sure that emphasis is placed on sleep duration and quality is recommended in order to improve our performance and ensure we perform to the best of our ability.
Sleep has also been reported to play a vital role in our recovery following training. In order to get the most out of our training, we must be able to recover from it.
Sleep plays a vital role in our longevity and overall health. Poor sleep has been suggested to have a correlation with all-cause mortality due to several possible mechanisms such as increased cardiovascular risk, increased cortisol secretion and many other variables which are suggested to have poor long term outcomes in our health and longevity.
Making an effort to sleep between 7 to 9 hours appears to be the general consensus when looking at the literature surrounding sleep.
In next week's article I will offer some advice on helping you improve this metric, some easy tips I have used myself and with clients to get on the right side of the pillow when it comes to our sleep hygiene and looking after our health in pursuit of our fitness goals.
“Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” - Naoplon Bonaparté.
Lastly, I would also like to clarify that I am not a registered dietician.
All advice disclosed here is simply advisory based on my qualifications as a fitness professional and personal experience and knowledge gained working with individuals and helping them reach their goals.
The advice given is not designed to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health problem - nor is it intended to replace the advice of a physician.
Always consult your physician or qualified health professional on any matters regarding your health.
I hope someone out there found some of this information useful here, just some food for thought.
For any questions in relation to this topic or training, nutrition, etc. or for coaching inquiries simply message me on my business page on instagram @coachedbycashel_ or by email - coachedbycashel@gmail.com
