Sleep and Weight Loss

How are sleep and weight loss connected?

Adults on average need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, but few actually get that much. According to the National Center on Sleep Disorders, 90 million people have difficulty sleeping. A lack of sleep can greatly affect health, and lead to weight gain, accelerated aging, or disease.

Sleep is not a passive process. It is a time for your body to grow, develop, and recover. If sleep is cut short, the body does not have enough time to repair muscle, consolidate memories, or release hormones needed for growth and appetite regulation.

Chances are that if you ask someone what they're doing to lose weight, they won't say "sleeping more". However, evidence has linked sleep and weight loss and inadequate sleep with obesity.

A recent study of 123 obese adults showed that those who reported sleeping better lost more weight than those who did not (1). Every additional hour of sleep was associated with a 0.7 kilogram loss in body fat.

The bad news is that if you currently have difficulty sleeping, it may only going to get worse with age. Studies show that 50 percent of people over the age of 60 say that they have difficulty sleeping. Older people need just as much sleep as all adults (7 to 9 hours), but they are more likely to wake frequently throughout the night.

When you sleep, your body goes through alternating patterns of REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non-rapid eye movement). This cycle repeats itself about every 90 minutes. During NREM, the onset of sleep begins and is evident by regular breathing and a drop in body temperature.

Slowly, blood pressure drops, muscles are increasingly relaxed, tissue and growth occurs, and energy is restored. Hormones (such as the Growth Hormone) are released to promote growth and development. After about 90 minutes of sleep, your body enters REM (rapid eye movement) which provides energy to your brain, support for day time performance, and complete rejuvenation. Restless sleep interrupts these cycles and interferes with the body’s natural process of healing, restoring, and rebuilding.

Make sleep and weight loss a priority and get the recommended amount of sleep needed each night. Isagenix Sleep Support & Renewal system can help by increasing natural sleep time, resetting the body’s sleep-wake cycle, and promoting health aging of the brain.

The snooze button will no longer be needed when you are getting quality sleep—instead, you will wake up feeling refreshed and renewed.

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References

1. Chaput JP, Tremblay A. Sleeping Habits Predict the Magnitude of Fat Loss in Adults Exposed to Moderate Caloric Restriction. Obes Facts 2012;5:561-6. doi: 10.1159/000342054

2. Prather AA, Puterman E, Lin J et al. Shorter leukocyte telomere length in midlife women with poor sleep quality. J Aging Res 2011;2011:721390. doi: 10.4061/2011/721390