3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

 

3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss.

Many people may think of diet and exercise when trying to lose weight; however, sleep is just as important to consider when trying to lose a few extra pounds.

To understand how sleep affects whether or not we lose or gain weight, we need to understand how weight loss happens in the first place. Once we know how the body loses and gains weight, we can learn how our metabolism and hormones play into sleeping. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Sleep affects us in two significant ways. The first one is more chemical and physiological with how it affects our metabolism, hormones, and other functions of the body. The second way it affects our success is more along the lines of psychology and quality of life. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

How do we lose and gain weight?

Weight loss comes down to simple math. If you are eating more calories than your body’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), then you will gain weight. If you are eating less than your TDEE, you will lose weight. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Your TDEE is made up of four things. See Figure 1. If you want to learn more about this, check out this article on metabolism.

  • BMR= Basal Metabolic Rate. How many calories you burn at rest. This mostly comes from the organs that burn energy to keep you alive.
  • NEAT= Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. How many calories you burn from daily movement: walking, talking, thinking, fidgeting, etc.
  • TEF= Thermic Effect of Food. How many calories it takes to break down the nutrients you consume.
  • Exercise Activity (EA)= How many calories you burn from exercise.

The current understanding is that 3,500 calories are in one pound of fat; therefore, you need to be in a 500-calorie deficit BELOW your TDEE daily for a week to lose one pound of fat.

-500 calories a day x 7 days in a week = -3,500 calories (1 pound of fat) burned

500 x 7 = 3,500 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Simple right? Not so fast! I always remind my clients that while that formula is simple, we call this nutritional science and not nutritional math for a reason. Let me explain.

Let’s imagine your TDEE equals 2,000 calories a day. If you eat 1,500 calories daily for a week, then mathematically, you should lose 1 pound of fat that week, except for the fact that your TDEE is constantly in flux. So it can never be PERFECT math. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

  • You might have some days where you exercise and some you don’t.
  • Some days might be full of foods high in protein and fibrous veggies that fire up your TEF, while other days might have a lower effect.
  • You might have days where your NEAT is more or less active than others.
  • Lastly, your BMR continually adjusts to a million variables, including diet and sleep.

There is an important thing to remember for someone struggling to lose weight. If you need a calorie deficit to lose weight, there are two numbers to consider. The obvious number is the calorie deficit required to lose weight. In the above example, this was the 500-calorie deficit. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

The second (and more important) number to consider is your TDEE/metabolism! Let’s revisit the previous formula from before, but imagine this person has a lower TDEE. If their TDEE is 1,500, then they would only be able to eat 1,000 calories a day to lose the same 1 pound of fat a week as the person who has a TDEE of 2,000.

The opposite is also true. If someone has a TDEE of 5,000, they would need to eat a high amount of calories to maintain their weight. That person would easily be able to slip into a fat-losing deficit while still eating a high volume of food. Think about lean professional athletes who eat insane amounts of calories and still have six-pack abs.

There comes the point where you can’t safely go into a significant enough deficit to lose fat without sacrificing your health. Nobody should be in a deficit below their TDEE long term. Being in a deficit means you are not getting enough calories, macronutrients, or micronutrients to maintain your body. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

It is far better for long-term weight loss success to focus on increasing your TDEE rather than staying in a deficit long-term. We know that undereating is one of the biggest reasons people gain weight over time. So it should be standard practice for individuals trying to lose weight to want to increase their TDEE for long-term weight loss success.

Let me reiterate. It is necessary to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight. Being too low of a deficit for too long will have negative health consequences, including rebounding and weight gain. For true long-term success with weight loss, it is necessary to increase the TDEE over time. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

What’s one of the best ways to increase your TDEE? If you guessed better sleep quality, then you guessed right!

How sleep affects your metabolism

We already mentioned how your TDEE is made up of your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), TEF (Thermic Effect of Food), and EA (Exercise Activity). To further understand how sleep affects metabolism, we must understand BMR better. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Your BMR is all the calories burned from your body’s essential functions. Each heartbeat requires calories, all the organs require calories to function, and every system of the body uses calories to operate. Some organs and functions of the body require more calories each day to keep us alive. Some are more efficient and require fewer calories. See Figure 2.

  • Our heart is highly efficient and only accounts for 8% of our BMR.
  • The brain is the supercomputer of the body and requires the most energy to sustain its functions. The brain accounts for 17% of our BMR.
  • When not in use, muscle tissue still requires energy to sustain life. Muscle tissue makes up 20% of our BMR.
  • The kidneys are always working to cleanse our bodies. Their demand comes to a total of 7% of our BMR.
  • Our digestive system makes up 10% of our BMR, give or take. (Remember this is when it’s inactive and is a different number than the Thermic Effect of Food—which increases our overall metabolism.)
  • Our liver is a huge organ and does a lot for us. It accounts for a massive 19% of our BMR.
  • Even body fat requires calories to sustain it since it’s still living tissue. It is mostly inactive, only accounting for 3% of our BMR
  • The rest of our organs, tissues, and basic metabolic functions account for a cumulative 16% of our BMR.
Figure 2

With your BMR being the single most significant contributor to your overall metabolism, it is only logical to recognize that having a higher BMR will contribute to your TDEE (and ability to lose weight) more than anything else, even exercise. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

When we sleep, our bodies move through different stages of sleep, each involving different recovery phases. When we discussed the effects of stress on the body, you might remember the difference between the parasympathetic fight or flight adrenaline state and the sympathetic rest and digest state of rest.

When we are in a sympathetic state, our bodies recover, digest, repair tissue, build new cells, and so much more. Therefore, spending enough time in this recovery state is CRUCIAL for developing an optimized metabolism. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Figure 3

Looking at Figure 3, which explains the stages of sleep, we can start to see why sleep is vital for our metabolism. NREM Stage N1 is our first phase of sleep. This phase is where we are still falling asleep and typically lasts about 1-17 minutes. The “N” stands for “non,” and the “REM” stands for “rapid eye movement.” The first 3 phases of sleep cycles do not include rapid eye movement. NREM N1 is the lightest state of falling asleep. During this time, we can experience sudden jerks and muscle spasms.

Our second sleep stage, NREM N2, is our light sleep phase. In this phase, our bodies start slowing down further, lasting about 10-25 minutes. Next, we enter NREM N3, known as our slow wave sleep or deep sleep. Deep sleep lasts for about 20-40 minutes. This is when your brain and body are the most relaxed. It is during this time that the most repair and recovery happens. If you wake up here, you will feel groggy. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Lastly, there is REM sleep. Which stands for rapid eye movement and lasts another 20-40 minutes. This is our dream sleep, where our brains sort through events and emotions—putting relevant memories into their proper storage place in the brain for recall later. If we wake up during this time, we can often feel uneasy depending on the dreams we might have been having.

In total, it takes about 90 minutes to complete all of your sleep cycles. Therefore, to properly maintain a healthy metabolism and tissue health, you need a minimum of 4 to 6 sleep cycles a night. To clarify, 4 sleep cycles equals 6 hours of sleep, and 6 sleep cycles equals 9 hours of sleep. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

If you sleep less than 6 hours a night, you are setting yourself up for an uphill battle with your metabolism. Sleeping 6 hours a night or less will slow down your BMR and contribute to chronic stress, leading to burnout, weight gain, and overall breakdown of your body. It has been proven repeatedly; just read this recent study that shows the link between lack of sleep and the inability to lose body fat. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Simply put, a lack of sleep will slow down your TDEE because it slows down all the organs contributing to your BMR. If you are not sleeping enough, your organs are not going through all the proper repairs they need to work optimally. As a result, they will eventually start to slow down and break down completely, leading to further health issues and weight gain.

How sleep affects your hormones

Inadequate sleep doesn’t just negatively affect your metabolism by slowing down your BMR; It will also negatively affect your hormones too! We are going to explain why in this section.

In the previous section, you learned about the sleep cycles that happen while asleep. We also want to consider our sleep/wake cycles that occur every day of our lives. This is known as our circadian rhythm. (Figure 4) Your circadian rhythm is your body’s biological clock that releases different hormones depending on the time of day.

Figure 4

As you wake up, your body temperature will rise, and your heart rate and blood pressure will increase. Upon waking, your body continues to ramp up for the day with increased cortisol and testosterone. This means your peak mental and physical performance should be about midday. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

As you approach the end of your day, your body begins its wind-down procedures with melatonin secretion and decreases in temperature, blood pressure, etc. It is a beautiful, natural rhythm delicately woven by all our daily dietary and environmental exposures. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Proper sleep isn’t solely about being asleep for the prescribed amount of time. Adequate sleep is also affected by having a healthy schedule for your circadian rhythm. If you are inconsistent about your bedtime, wake time, or sleep schedule in general. Your hormones will struggle to keep up with your inconsistency, stressing your body and leading to dysfunction.

One of the most positive things you can do for your hormones (besides lowering your stress, drinking water, and eating a balanced diet) is to have a consistent sleep schedule. This means a regular bedtime, even on the weekends, and having a constant time to get up every morning. Ideally, you will allow for 7-9 hours in bed when considering your sleep schedule and knowing that it might take extra time to fall asleep and get out of bed. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

We will talk more about tricks to improve your sleep next week! Follow us on Instagram @mddietclinic for updates on future blogs and daily tips.

How sleep affects your adherence to a program

The last thing we want to mention is how a lack of sleep is going to affect your overall compliance to your goals. We have all experienced a time where we are tired, run down, and we simply stop caring. It might have been a long day at work and we break our diet by grabbing fast food on the way home and having another breakdown at home.

Sleep deprivation has a direct link with our brain. Since so much of our time asleep is spent keeping our brain, hormones, and tissues healthy/ maintained. It makes sense that a lack of sleep will contribute to a breakdown of all these things. A few other symptoms of sleep deprivation might include but is not limited to:

  • Loss of motivation and discipline
  • Increased errors (critical or small)
  • Not feeling like yourself
  • Needing excessive amounts of caffeine
  • Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy
  • Falling asleep during tasks
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • A lack of creativity or motivation
  • A feeling of sadness looming over you
  • Forgetfulness
  • Slow response time both physically and mentally
  • Grogginess during the day
  • Poor mood regulation, you might often have emotional outbursts of anger or sadness
  • Physical aches and pains
  • A loss of appetite or an uncontrollable increase in appetite
  • Health issues including
    • Diabetes
    • Heart health issues
    • Mental health issues including depression and anxiety
    • Poor immunity and greater risk of sickness
    • Obesity
    • And so much more

To be successful in anything in life requires consistency and focus. Your health and fitness goals are the same. To be successful with a weight loss program requires consistency, focus, effort, and ADHERENCE. Poor sleep will completely dismantle your ability to stay on track with dietary or fitness goals.

I am going to leave you with some HOPE. Sleep can be trained, just like your muscles. Improving sleep might be challenging at first, but over time you can start to improve it. In doing so you will create a positive upward spiral of momentum towards better health. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Come back next week for part two of this article where we are going to further break down the relationship of sleep and weight loss. As well as discuss many different strategies that you can begin to improve your sleep. Everything from supplementation, to lifestyle changes. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

Never forget that you can do this! Change is possible for everyone who is willing. 3 Reasons Why Sleep is Important For Weight Loss

To sum it up

  1. Sleep, along with diet and exercise, is one of the biggest contributors to weight loss or weight gain.
  2. The main thing to consider with weight gain is your metabolism, AKA your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This is the sum total of all the calories you use in a day. A surplus from this number leads to weight gain, a deficit from this number will lead to weight loss.
  3. Your TDEE is made up of a few things, one of them being your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR is how many calories your organs, tissues, and chemical reactions in your body will burn even if you were at total rest. The higher your BMR, the easier it will be to lose weight.
  4. Poor sleep leads to a slowed down BMR that will lead to weight gain even if you don’t change anything else in your diet.
  5. Poor sleep also leads to hormone dysfunction which will further negatively affect your overall metabolism and lead to weight gain.
  6. Lack of sleep negatively affects your brain. Both physical and mental health take a hit when you are chronically sleep deprived. Making it so much harder, if not impossible to stick with a goal.

If ever in doubt or seeking guidance, know that we stand by your side, ready to assist. With over four decades of expertise, we’ve proudly been a cornerstone in countless health and wellness journeys. We warmly invite you to embark on your transformative journey with us as your trusted partner.

Salt Lake clinic: 801-758-2130