Sleep More for Weight Loss
Posted: Aug 30 in Weight Loss Blog by Staff
There is finally a bandwagon that can live up to the hype when it comes to helping you lose weight, except it isn’t a wagon, it’s a train—the midnight train, that is. You’ve always been told that getting enough sleep is important for your health, but you may not have realized that it can actually help your weight loss efforts, as well. More specifically, neglecting healthy sleeping habits could negatively impact your ability to lose weight by causing you to overeat and indulge more in sugary and fattening foods.
When you make the decision to get weight loss surgery, you are choosing to start living an overall healthier lifestyle. This stretches far beyond the goals for your weight loss program. Getting more sleep can help you with managing stress, with being more open to interpersonal relationships, and with improving your overall physical health. It also, conveniently, can help you with your weight loss goals.
The Sleep and Weight Loss Connection
When you are too tired, your defenses are down. You are more likely to give in to having an unhealthy snack or a sugary drink in the interest of staying awake, and this can actually cause you to gain weight—or at the very least make you less likely to keep up with your weight loss plans. But the reality is that getting enough sleep every night can have a way bigger impact on your overall health than simply helping your weight loss goals.
Research has shown over and over again that getting enough sleep can have a direct impact on:
- Your mental health
- Your ability to manage stress
- Your interpersonal relationships and communication style
- Memory function
- Creative thinking and problem-solving ability
- Work and school outcomes
- Physical health, including weight loss
- Immune system functionality
- Cognitive functionality
This is just a quick list! Long-term healthy sleeping habits are also demonstrated to lower the risk of chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s and type-2 diabetes. The benefits go on and on.
The problem is that making the decision that you need to get better sleep doesn’t necessarily make better sleep happen. Those types of changes don’t necessarily happen overnight. Instead, you need to look at your daily habits and consider what changes you can make to your actions as you are awake to help prepare yourself for a better night of rest.
These changes may include:
- Cutting down on your screen time
- Reducing caffeine consumption
- Creating a regular sleeping routine, including a bed time and a regular time that you will wake up.
Making simple changes like this could have an impact on your ability to keep up with your weight loss goals. Improved sleep is just another healthy habit to work on developing on your way to a healthier lifestyle after having weight loss surgery.