Struggling with Weight Loss? The Secret Could Be in Your Sleep…

We ALL know sleep is important. Why else would our parents have made us have lights out by 8pm every night growing up!?

Sleep IS important, but as we get older, it’s for different reasons. 

We are talking today about the impact of sleep on weight, BUT know that sleep impacts so much more. It impacts the underlying root issues for so many chronic diseases from diabetes to psoriasis. 

HORMONAL BALANCE

Ah, hormones. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about hormones. Especially if you have made it to your 40s. 

But today is not about estrogen or progesterone. We have hundreds of hormones, which are basically just communication molecules, relaying info out and taking info in. 

In regards to sleep, leptin and ghrelin are two hormones that are directly affected. 

Leptin controls your satiety. Ghrelin leads to feelings of hunger and low satisfaction after meals. 

An imbalance in either of these can lead to overeating and eventual weight gain. Their disruption can also play a role in inflammation, blood sugar imbalance, and chronic disease. 

These two hormones work in rhythm together and their dysfunction creates very common symptomology I see in my clients. Through balancing blood sugar and addressing sleep, my clients will experience a full rebalancing. 

INSULIN SENSITIVITY

Ah, one of my favorite topics. 

When deprived of sleep, even just for one day, the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar is severely compromised. 

Research has demonstrated that even one night of sleep deprivation in otherwise healthy adults can result in blood sugar levels comparable to those of individuals with diabetes. 

Wild. 

And where there is poor regulation of blood sugar, cravings follow. 

And not for vegetables. 

Seeking out sweet or crunchy or highly palatable foods is a mechanism to create dopamine and a quick burst of energy because your body knows you need it. 

And even crueler, is that when your blood sugar and insulin are out of balance, it becomes much easier to store fat, which leads to insulin resistance. And we start the merry-go-round again. Best just to avoid the ride if possible. 

CORTISOL & FAT STORAGE

When we skip or have poor quality sleep, our body reads this as a stress signal. Stress triggers the release of cortisol, because historically, if you didn’t sleep, it could mean that you’d lower your alertness and increase the chances that either you couldn’t catch dinner or that you were dinner (for that bear or tiger, etc). 

So glad we live in the 2020s…just saying. 

While helpful for trying to keep us alert and functioning, when overproduced or produced chronically without respite, cortisol will tell the body to store fat, particularly around the abdominal area. This is one of the hardest types of body fat to lose. 

Now, don’t stress if you are a chronically sleep-deprived new mom or going through a stressful phase. Our bodies are designed to manage a low level of stress. The problem comes when we are ALSO not eating well, not mitigating stress with exercise, or have adopted other stress inducing habits (like drinking alcohol to cope). 

The BEST way to shuttle cortisol out of the body is movement–go for a walk, lift some weights, go work in the garden. 

Meditation, deep breathing, and prayer are also excellent strategies to help lower blood pressure and cortisol, and bring the body back into homeostasis. 

Isn’t it crazy how interconnected our body systems are? I’m continually amazed by the gift we have been given, and even though it sometimes feels like work, it’s our job to take care of this gift and steward it accordingly. 

And this is one of the main reasons we have to take a root cause approach to any health issue you have. 

If you are chronically not sleeping well, getting to the cause of that is key so that you can reduce these downstream effects mentioned today. 

If you need support, just reply to this email or schedule a consult today! 

I’m rooting for you, 

Katie