Hi guys. We are talking all about weight loss and sleep. How is sleep connected to your weight loss or weight gain? Let’s explore this.
Okay. So sleep and weight loss or weight gain, what’s the connection? As if it’s not hard enough when you’re a new mom and you’ve obviously got the extra baby weight and you do all these things to try to start to get that off and get your energy levels back up.
And then boom, we’re hit with exhaustion because we’ve got a baby that doesn’t sleep and it just makes it all that much harder. Don’t worry, I’ve got some tips for you and I want to help you understand this a bit better.
One of the things to think about is the brain and the way we work, the way we’re wired. So I have previously written a blog where I explain more about the brain and when you’re tired, that it affects our decision-making process around food.
So our more logical, rational and thought process is going to be suppressed because we’re tired. We’re going to have more emotive responses, we’re going to think emotionally, which often leads to knee-jerk reactions and just less well thought through choices around our food and nutrition.
That can immediately affect our weight because we’re not making great choices. We’re just not in a rested enough state to make healthy choices.
And another reason that sleep can really impact our weight loss or gain is hormonal. Because when we are sleeping, we release more hormone that lets us feel full, it’s how we sleep and how we’re not feeling hungry all the time.
This hormone gives the stomach the sensation of fullness, our brains think we’re full. When we don’t have as much sleep or when we are sleep deprived, we release more hungry hormones, so we feel more hungry. That alone, just the hormone release or lack of can really impact, again, what we’re putting into our systems. If you feel hungry all the time because you’re not sleeping you’re going to eat more.
Then there’s also the other factor, which is when we’re tired we crave more calories, we crave more carbohydrates and we crave more fats because the body is basically trying to stock up and go, I need the stuff to keep going. And so again, being tired, not getting enough sleep is going to affect what we are craving to put into our systems.
And then there’s the metabolism. So of course, if we’re not getting enough sleep, if we are tired, we don’t exactly wake feeling very energized. We don’t exactly have much energy in the day to really do anything other than what we need to do to keep our body going and to look after our little ones.
That lack of energy is going to affect our choices when it comes to physical activity. It’s going to mean we need to rest more in the day. We might choose not to take a bit of exercise that we otherwise would have if we had the energy. So of course the lack of energy is going to create a lack of exercise, which is just further perpetuating the problem.
It’s really important to not let sleep deprivation or lack of sleep cause weight gain for other health concerns too. Things like high blood pressure and sleep related breathing disorders often come through weight gain and in turn those cause sleep problems, which make it harder to shift the weight.
So there’s a real link between weight and sleep and it’s something to definitely think about. Whether you’re on the other side of this now and looking at how to improve your weight or whether you’re a new mom and thinking, how do I get the energy? How do I get rested enough to look after my weight and my energy levels and my health and everything else?
There’s definitely a way it always starts with sleep. And if that’s the trick, if that’s the tripper where you’re going, “well, I know we need sleep but I can’t get it because”, what’s the because? Is it your little one? What can we do to fix that? Because we have a whole wealth of answers for you on that too.
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