I’m going to keep things very simple today, and really just focus on the key points here. Fact; if you are not sleeping long enough, or well enough, you are jeopardizing your body composition results. This could be your fat loss, your muscle growth, or both. You can eat as clean as you like and exercise your heart out; but if your sleep sucks, everything sucks!

How does sleep impact your body composition?

• Bad sleep makes you feel tired. So your body makes you crave energy food to give you a boost to be able to keep going. That means you crave sugary food or high carbohydrate food. This leads to making poor choices.
• It increases your appetite so that you can consume the energy food, leading to overeating.
• Makes you grumpy reducing serotonin production (happy hormone) and increasing cortisol (stress hormone) so increases your stress levels. High cortisol levels reduce fat burning.
• Increases glucose secretion into the blood stream. This is sent to the liver to then metabolize it for storage. As you are consuming higher levels of carbs your glycogen (energy) stores in your cells are already full, so your liver converts the glucose to fat and stores it around the abdomen as visceral fat (dangerous fat).
• Increased blood glucose levels increases risk of Insulin Resistance and Diabetes type 2 which effect body composition in the same way as previous point.
• Reduces muscle density. When your body is stressed (which it is when it is tired) it doesn’t have the energy to break down fat for fuel, so it breaks down muscle tissue, which is easier. So you struggle to build muscle mass.
• It decreases hydration. With reduces muscle mass you have less cells to story water in therefore you have reduces hydration levels. This creates a vicious circle because without adequate hydration you can’t burn fat, you struggle to build muscle tissues and therefore reduce body composition results.

What ‘good sleep’ looks like:

• You generally need 7-8 hours per night
• No waking through the night (no, not even to go to the toilet!)
• Waking feeling refreshed or at least well rested
• Falling asleep within 15 minutes of going to bed

Tips on how to achieve ‘good sleep’:

• Work out when you need to wake up and set your alarm 8 hours prior. This alarm will notify you that you need to go to bed.
• Set a second alarm half an hour before your bed time alarm. This alarm is so you can turn off all electronic gadgets. Electronics such as iPads, phones, laptops etc. increase blue light omissions which reduce sleep quality. They also stimulate the brain (thing annoying or exciting post/email) so prevent you from being able to fall asleep.
• Go to bed 8 hours before you need to wake up.
• Avoid eating for at least an hour before bed, preferably 2 hours. Eating too close to bedtime means your body is still busy working, digesting, when it should be resting and recovering. It is during rest that the body burns fat and builds muscle tissue.
• Sleep in pitch black (you shouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of your face). You can wear a face mask to help.
• Sleep in complete silence (no ticking clock, no traffic etc.) You can wear ear plugs to help.
• Avoid drinking too much for a couple of hours before bed if you struggle with waking to go to the toilet
• Reduce your sugar intake. Studies have proven your sleep quality improves with less sugar in your diet.
• Avoid drinking caffeine (coffee, black tea, coke etc.) after 12pm
• Avoid going to bed hungry

Implement even half of this and you will improve your sleep!

Sweet Dreams!

– Coach Terri