Sunday, June 22, 2014

Losing Weight by Sleeping

It might come as a big surprise to some of you (it did to me) that sleeping is an important part of losing weight.

Alright, maybe it wasn't such a big surprise. I had read (many times) that some pretty important hormones are produced while we sleep. One of them is the hormone that signals your brain that you are getting full and it's time to stop eating. Apparently four and a half hours of sleep per night doesn't produce enough of that hormone because I never really felt full until I was way past the uncomfortable mark.

Your body also burns a surprising amount of calories in muscle and tissue repair and regeneration while we are sleeping.

One of the simple things that has helped me in losing weight over the past year was to purposefully increase the amount of sleep I was getting. I am now sleeping six hours per night on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes it's still less and sometimes it's around seven and a half hours (my sleep cycles are about ninety minutes).

I'd like to say that my CPAP machine helped in the better sleep mission, but it really didn't have a great impact on the way that I felt. It did help Chris to sleep better, though! I never really felt tired or extremely fatigued before the Obstructive Sleep Apnea diagnosis and I didn't feel a lot better after using the CPAP, either. The biggest change came when I decided to get more sleep!

I'm not a big fan of sleeping. I think it's a waste of time. I'd rather watch old movies or television shows (and I don't do very much of that) than just spend time sleeping. I don't mind a brief power nap, but that's different. My power naps are seventeen minutes long. I don't have to set an alarm. I just quickly doze off and wake up refreshed 17 minutes later. I feel very blessed to have this somewhat unique ability.

Once I came to the realization that there is an important purpose to getting enough sleep, it became easier to justify sleeping more. I don't know what your sleep habits are. And it's not really important to me. But it should be important to you if you are interested in good health.

So, work hard today...
...and sleep well tonight!

John <><

1 comment:

  1. I'm not so good at getting enough sleep either. I'll too often come alive at night when I should be thinking more seriously about getting some sleep. It's probably the thing I look forward to the most about retirement; not having to be up at a certain time and sleeping when my body tells me it's ready.

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