How Sleep Affects Your Weight
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We’re all aware that rest is important to good health, but you might not realize just how sleep affects your weight. When you think about a truly healthy lifestyle, you want to consider some of the elements that often get overlooked. Sure, we all recognize the need to eat well and to exercise, but healthy living goes even further than that. If you truly want to take good care of yourself and ensure that you are at your best, then you must learn to manage your stress and get enough sleep. Not only can a lack of sleep cause health problems down the road but it can also contribute to an inability to lose weight.
Sleep affects your weight in both direct and indirect ways. First and foremost, a lack of sleep can result in a negative impact on just about everything in your life and with respect to your health. Remember that you are not at your best when you are sleep deprived. When tired, you don’t have the focus or energy to power through a workout. You may be more inclined to skip a workout as you simply don’t have the necessary energy. You may find that you are moving through your day without much thought at all and thereby compromise the healthy habits that you know you need to practice. Ultimately, a lack of sleep can cause you to make poor choices that lead to weight gain.
You Will Feel the Negative Impact Almost Immediately
Another negative way in which sleep affects your weight is by sapping your willpower or motivation. If you are tired, you will find that you have diminished inhibitions when tempted by the wrong foods. You will be more likely to turn to comfort foods or those high in sugar to give you a quick energy boost. This often results in eating too much throughout the day or even to “mindless eating,” in which you simply graze on the wrong foods all day long. This leads to bad habits, and you therefore need to recognize when lack of sleep may be catching up with you. Insufficient sleep may manifest in a lack of focus and willpower throughout your day.
Consider that sleep is the body’s time to repair and rejuvenate. When you are sleep deprived, your body doesn’t get that necessary opportunity, which leads to bad things. So though you might not have realized the degree to which sleep affects your weight, lack of sleep can overwhelm your weight loss or weight maintenance efforts in serious ways. You need sleep as part of a balanced lifestyle in order to be your best and protect your health. If you are working to lose weight, then adequate sleep should be as high of a priority as exercise and eating right.