Why Good Sleep is Essential to Weight Loss

In the 80's the ability to live with very little sleep was held up as some kind of badge of honour. The less sleep you needed, the more intelligent you were, and the more highly regarded you were.

But now the facts are clearly out, and we realise that a lack of enough quality sleep is a prime cause of lowered metabolic rate, overweight, illness and disease.

In fact a lack of sufficient sleep is now being seen as a modern disease, creating stress, compromising the body's ability to regenerate, and even lowering our basic metabolic rate. Our metabolic rate plays a crucial role in weight loss and is every bit as important as the amount of food that we eat, and the amount of activity we have.

I'm sure you've heard the old story from diet companies that losing weight is simply a matter of getting the right balance between the food you eat (energy in) and the energy you expend in activity (energy out). In fact this is nonsense, because if your metabolism isn't operating as it should, you'll struggle to lose weight no matter what you do.

There are many lifestyle factors that impact on metabolic rate, and sleep is one of them, so quality sleep is a crucial part of any serious weight loss program. The amount of sleep you need is unique to you, though probably it will be around 7 1/2 to 8 hours of good sleep each night. Of course kids need a lot more than that, often more like 12 or 13 hours of sleep nightly.

When it comes to recovery from serious illness, quality sleep becomes even more important.

9 Tips to a Better Night's Sleep

1 Sleep time is as precious as the air you breathe, so guard it well. Who cares if the house is a mess! It's far more important that every member of the family get their sleep time.

If sleep interruption is beyond your control (for example if you have small children or a sick partner who needs care during the night) make sure you get extra sleep during the day, and also make sure you get some nights off.

2 Have a routine. A time for slowing down in the evening, a time for going to bed, a time for waking up, a time for all of the activities you need to do in the day. Although you'll obviously vary your routine from time to time, your regular routine will help to train your brain for efficient "shut down".

3 About the slow down time before bed. This is a time when you want to avoid stimulation, whether that's from books or television, or from alcohol for example. This is a time for dimmed lighting, quiet music, and easy conversation.

4 Dump stress. When people tolerate unacceptable levels of stress in their lives, they can then suffer from intrusive, worried thoughts when they should be sleeping and this can be very distressing. Two powerful techniques, Logotherapy and NeuroStim, can stop these thoughts in their tracks and allow a quick path to the land of nod. You can learn more about these on TopLifeSolutions.com.

5 Prepare Your Bedroom. Of course your bed and pillows etc should be comfortable! But in addition your room should be dark and on the cool side, with fresh air. Those are ideal sleeping conditions.

6 Don't get up once you've gone to bed except for good reason. I've heard experts tell insomniacs not to stay in bed if they can't sleep because they'll end up associating their bed with their sleeping difficulties. Really this is rather illogical because bed is already associated with lots of things apart from sleep! My own advice is to stay in bed if it's an appropriate sleep time in order to train your brain that this time of night means bed!

And there's very good evidence for my stance on this. Take the example of a baby or small child whom we're helping to move into a good sleep routine. One thing we never do is, after a time of trying, get them up out of their bed! The idea is to provide as little stimulation as we possibly can because otherwise that would be training them to be wakeful - the exact opposite of what we're hoping to achieve.

So stay in bed, and use one of many proven relaxation techniques so that if you're not sleeping, you're at least training yourself to maintain a relaxed state - you're at least "resting".

7 You must be physically active during the day. Your body needs vigorous physical activity in order to properly produce sleep hormones. Mornings or early afternoons are the best times for you to play a sport, or go for that really brisk walk or bike ride.

8 Enjoy good relationships with everyone around you. If you have strained relationships, or adversarial relationships, this will detract from your sense of wellbeing and therefore will definitely impact on your sleep. Get your relationships in shape and you'll enjoy much better sleep.

9 Enjoy good nutrition. In the end it's the nutrients we take into our body that allow us to produce the hormones that allow good sleep.

About the Author

There are 17 lifestyle factors which have a important impact on weight loss, and quality sleep is just one of them. Christine Sutherland's free book "17 Solutions" spells out each of them and tells you how to get them right! Available courtesy of the globally-launched Kind Communities Initiative.

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