Maximize Sleep to Burn More Fat

Sleep is our opportunity for optimal fat burning. Countless studies have concluded that there is a strong correlation between getting adequate sleep and being at a healthy weight. One study in children showed that those with the least amount of sleep had a 92 percent greater rate of being overweight compared to those who slept the most. That is significant! Unfortunately, even if you have started eating healthier and exercising, skimping on sleep can seriously undermine your weight loss efforts. Here's how:

When your body is sleep deprived it will seek energy. This leads to subconscious urges to eat. When the brain waves of healthy, normal weight adults aged 22-26 were measured after a night of poor sleep, results showed that being tired causes increased activity in the area of the brain associated with food acquisition. This can lead to food cravings and overeating.

Further studies show that those cravings are usually for carbohydrates. Carbohydrate cravings come from the body needing to repair itself. Your stomach’s carbohydrate hunger signal, called ghrelin, also helps trigger the release of growth hormone in your body, which is needed to repair wear and tear.

Growth hormone is naturally released while we sleep to help us repair. If you are sleeping less than seven to eight hours per night, your body will try to repair itself during the day. This causes excess ghrelin release and carbohydrate cravings throughout the day.

Plus, a lack of sleep all by itself is enough to inappropriately raise cortisol levels. This is problematic for weight because too much cortisol turns off fat burning gene switches in the liver leading to insulin resistance, less fat burn, more belly fat, and obesity.
If you do get a poor night’s sleep, you should increase your intake of energy supporting nutrients like B vitamins and Kreb’s cycle nutrients to prevent your body from looking to extra calories to support your energy levels. Using pine nut oil, a natural appetite suppressant, can also tame excess cravings after a night of poor sleep.

If you want to enhance your weight loss efforts by supporting deep, restorative sleep, you will want to start by following The Leptin Diet. After six hours of not eating, you begin to burn more fat than sugar. Sleep is the primary time when we go longer than six hours without eating. Particularly, if you violate rule #1: Never Eat After Dinner (allow 11-12 hours between dinner and breakfast), you will sabotage your fat-burning potential.

A variety of nutrients can improve your relaxing neurotransmitters and promote more restful sleep. Magnesium is one of the most deficient minerals in Americans and it also happens to be one of the most important nutrients to promote relaxation and deep sleep. GABA, one of our neurotransmitters that promotes sleepiness, is activated by magnesium as well as l-theanine, passion flower extract, and lemon balm. The relaxing amino acids glycine and taurine are helpful for enhancing relaxation further. Melatonin is a hormone that promotes sleepiness and is helpful for many people when taken before bed.

Getting adequate restful sleep is a vital part of losing weight and getting healthy. If you are hoping to lose extra pounds by summer, or simply want to support more restful sleep, following The Leptin Diet and adding natural sleep nutrients to your routine is the best way to do it! Go ahead, catch those ZZZ’s!