Nutrition & Exercise Under Control but Still Not Losing Weight?
by Kim Hynes, MBA CIHC, Nutritional Health Coach Wellspring Counseling and Health, LLC
ARE YOU WORKING OUT AND EATING WELL, BUT STILL not able to lose any weight or feel your best? Is it really all about exercise and food alone?
Lack of sleep can actually contribute to weight gain, depression and anxiety, and getting sick more often - even if you are watching your food and exercising regularly. It can also contribute to an increased risk of developing heart disease, stroke, or heart attacks.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
People who get less than 7-8 hours of sleep are at the highest risk. Most people report they don’t have deep sleep and don’t dream. The hours from 10pm to 2am are when our deepest sleep occurs. That really means we should be settling down around 9:30pm. For some, that seems very early, but the reality is we were meant to go to bed when it gets dark and meant to wake with the sun.
When clients are cleaning up their nutrition and getting exercise, but still haven’t lost the weight or not feeling well, we look to other lifestyle factors that could affect their progress. Other components to a healthy lifestyle include stress management, self care, career, relationships and one of the most overlooked...sleep. Without sleep, weight loss through just adjusting our food and exercise will only go so far. Without sleep, our bodies cannot recover and our hormones cannot rebalance. It’s very difficult to deal with a stressful day when your body is running on empty.
So many of us use caffeine to handle our early mornings which causes a disruption to our hormones and gut and we use caffeine later in the day which causes imbalance in our cortisol levels. We need cortisol to be going down at the end of the day, but we ramp it up with coffee and energy drinks when we hit that late day slump. It can take up to 8 hours for that afternoon caffeine to leave our systems.
Many of my clients are reporting not being able to stay asleep or get to sleep. Many people don’t go to bed until very late and have less than 7 hours of sleep. In fact, some people even brag about being able to get by on only 4 hours of sleep a night. This is a badge of honor you don’t want.
Have you ever grocery shopped while tired? We tend to fill our carts with more sugar and processed foods. These foods are filled with added sugar and have no nutritional value. They are also filled with chemicals designed to preserve them and give them consistency which disrupts our hormones and our gut health. more > 8
