Nutrition & Exercise Under Control

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?

Let’s dig a little deeper.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Having too little sleep changes our decision making about all of our health choices. When we’re tired, we want a change of state. We want to feel better and often we will choose our favorite comfort foods to do that. People who sleep less tend to eat more calories and have a higher appetite for sugar.

We may not handle stress well when tired and the body cannot recover. The main hormones that are affected are insulin, ghrelin, leptin, cortisol and growth hormone. The change in these hormones can greatly affect our fat storage, our hunger level, our ability to feel full, and our stress responses.

So the question is, how can we get better sleep?

Strategies to get a better night sleep.

• Get daylight EARLY in the day. This helps your circadian clock so you can sleep at night and wake up when the sun comes up.

• Exercise. Exercise and movement can help relieve anxiety. Reducing stress can help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

• Be consistent. Try to get to bed at the same time every night even on the weekends.

• Eat early. Eat your last meal 3 hours before you go to sleep. Digestion takes a lot of work.

• Avoid too much alcohol. Alcohol helps you fall asleep quickly, but will disrupt your sleep later in the night.

• Do not consume caffeine after noon each day. Your body needs about 8 hours to clear it. Caffeine disrupts cortisol which needs to be going down when we want to sleep.

• Get off the electronics an hour before bedtime. Blue light from phones, iPads and computers contributes to melatonin suppression. This is the hormone you need for sleep. Turn the red light timer on and place your devices up at least an hour before bedtime.

• Take a cool shower before bed. This will adjust your body temperature and help you feel relaxed. A cool core and a dark and quiet room are essential.

• Cut out TV an hour before bed and read. This gets your mind off your day and gets you away from electronics and TV. Reading is an escape.

• Diffuse essentials. Oils like vetiver and lavender can promote sleep.

Sleep tight and be well, my friends! g