Your coaching guide to achieving your best night’s rest and founder of Sleep Science Academy, Devin Burke, reveals how sleep can help you lose weight and maintain those healthy results.
The Sleep-Weight Connection
I have seen a substantial connection between sleep and weight loss firsthand with many people. These individuals try all the diets and exercise disciplines from CrossFit to Orange Theory, only to be confused when they discover they are not losing weight.
Then, when I asked about their sleep, I realized they don’t sleep well. There is a direct correlation between weight gain and sleep: cortisol levels remain high when we don’t get the rest we need. This elevated stress hormone leads to craving sugar and fat.
The hormones that signal we are full or hungry, ghrelin and leptin, become disoriented. Subsequently, we crave sugar and fat because they have the most energy, but we don’t know when to stop. We also suffer inadequate willpower to make sound decisions regarding our diet.
Rather than opting for water versus a soda, or a salad versus a burger, choosing the soda and burger is easier. These poor choices result in us being cranky, stressed, and suffering low willpower due to insufficient rest.
We then repeat the cycle day after day and gain 5, 10, 15, or 100 extra pounds that we carry around on our bodies. All of this informs us that these problems are not only mental issues but also physiological concerns.
Hormones
Along with ghrelin and leptin, insulin is an intriguing hormone we need to discuss. If you are familiar with diabetes or know someone with it, you may understand something about insulin already.
Insulin
Essentially, insulin unlocks the cell to shuttle glucose to our muscles. But when we do not get sufficient quality sleep, our insulin regulation gets thrown off – disrupted.
Insulin disruption is another reason people experience hunger cravings and begin making bad food choices. These choices become habits, leading to patterns where our real weight gain happens.
Cortisol
The stress hormone cortisol remains high when we don’t sleep well, which triggers the body with the message, “Hey, we are under stress and must store fat because it is an emergency.” Believing it has an emergency, our body holds this fat around the midsection.
Sleeping well is a foundational key to achieving those goals if you want to lose weight and maintain that healthy weight throughout your life.
Final Thoughts
I hope this video and information are helpful, inspiring you to take action on prioritizing and protecting your sleep to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
But you don’t have to do this alone.
Sleep Science Academy’s professional team of sleep coaches and our unique, empowering program of Dynamic Sleep Recalibration (DSR) can put your sleep issues behind you for a lifetime of restful sleep.
Each individual receives the guidance and support necessary to conquer any sleep challenges through their personal certified holistic health and sleep coach. The Sleep Academy Difference relies on numerous proven science-based methods and techniques, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), to develop personalized treatment plans addressing each individual’s needs.
Plus, our exceptional success rate allows us to offer a 100% money-back guarantee of successfully leaving insomnia in the rearview mirror.
Contact us today to schedule your free sleep consultation with one of our sleep coaches and take that first step on the pathway to a new, more fulfilling life.
There is no time like now to begin sleeping better.