Top Reasons Why Sleep is Most Important Factor for a Better Body
Getting a proper night’s sleep consistently can easily be called as the single most important things as far as maintaining the right shape of your body is concerned. No matter how diligently you stick to your diet or exercise schedule, if you are missing out on a good sleep quality, you will fail to achieve the kind of body you are trying to build for yourself. A good sleep health can in turn make the process of losing weight much easier by increasing the effectiveness of your work out and diet. We will therefore be looking at all the reasons why sleep is quintessential for a better body by evaluating the relation between proper sleeping and weight gain and why does your body need sleep.
1 Brain Function
A key factor in good overall sleep and weight loss is the way your brain functions. Although it may not look like it, your brain function has a lot to do with the way your body is processing your diet and exercising. A good sleep helps you maintain good mental functioning which in turn increases the efficiency of your work out. Different stages of sleep help in crucial aspects of the brain such as memory consolidation, cognition, mood, productivity, concentration, and mood boost. This not only helps in increasing the athletic performance of the body but also reduces the risk of injuries and accidents.
2 Muscle Repair and Immunity
The restorative qualities of sleep such as muscle repair helps people participate in physical activities that put extra strain on the muscles. Additionally, better rested individuals experience better motivation and can easily channel energy bursts from their body. This is why players are often advised by their trainers to have a good night’s sleep before a big event. Even non-athletic individuals can easily perform their work out sessions with ease without putting too much stress on their body muscles and heart. People who have a good sleep health are also more likely to have a good immune function and they are better equipped to fight with infections that cause illnesses.
3 Weight Loss
Before trying to understand how does sleeping help you lose weight and how does sleep burn fat, let’s look at a couple of studies related to the subject. A study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information that was trying to find a link between sleeping and weight gain established that poor sleep is responsible for lack of proper regulation of glucose in the body. It also said that insufficient sleep was linked with decreased insulin sensitivity and a heightened risk of obesity. Such individuals are therefore at a marked risk of experiencing conditions like type 2 diabetes. The researchers pointed at the mark similarity in the growing trend of obesity and poor sleep health which are almost running parallel to each other.
Another study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal monitored several participants suffering with obesity who were made to sleep in either a period of 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours for a span of 2 weeks. The researchers looking at the relation between weight loss and sleeping found that the people who slept for about 5.5 hours every night actually lost their muscle mass. Whereas the participants in the second set lost 55 percent more body fat.
4 Appetite
Numerous similar studies in the past have established the link between quality sleep and weight loss. Researchers have also pointed at the abnormal levels of hormones that control hunger in the body, known as leptin and ghrelin. Lack of sleep decreases the levels of leptin which suppresses the appetite in your body and increases that of ghrelin which is responsible for a heightened appetite. This makes it harder for sleep-deprived people to stay in a good shape because of the constant craving of food that they experience due to hormonal imbalance. Not only does this increase your appetite for unhealthy food but also reduce your motivation of working out.
5 Stress
This in a way triggers a cycle which increases your cortisol levels that are responsible for regulating stress in your body. Increased stress in turn makes it further hard to fall asleep and you find it extremely hard to come out of the cycle once you are in it. What’s worse is that people can experience conditions like stress eating at times like these, particularly sugary and fatty foods. Such a condition forces an individual to keep eating even when they are not actually hungry as this is just a way of the body responding to increases emotion levels. Lack of sleep makes it harder for the insular cortex in the brain to deal with such an issue, so much so that at times sleep-deprived individuals can’t even tell the difference between food that is fresh and that which is rotten.
Bottom line
So, the answer to questions like “does sleeping help you lose weight?” and “does sleep burn fat?” is “yes, it does!” However, studies have shown that insufficient amount of sleep can reduce the amount of weight lost as fat but increase the amount of weight lost as body mass. To make sure that you do not miss out on achieving a good night’s sleep consistently, try following these easy steps when facing problem falling asleep. You may also want to invest in a good mattress and an equally suitable mattress topper that you need for sleeping comfortably. Check out some of the best feather mattress topper reviews from this year.
In conclusion, we would like to state that all it takes is the right amount of sleep along with your diet and exercise to help maintain the balance between weight loss and sleeping. We hope that the facts mentioned above help you better understand why does your body need sleep to achieve the kind of body you are aiming for.