Sleep and Weight Loss: The #1 Overlooked Connection
Posted by Ray Hall on Thu, Jun 30, 2011 @ 01:08 PM
Source: Google Images
Have you ever considered that POOR SLEEP can sabotage your WEIGHT LOSS plan?
When it comes to losing weight, most people are focused on calorie counting or taking their exercise routine up a notch to drop the extra pounds. But losing weight is not just about eating right and keeping an exercise schedule. Sleep is a critical factor in health and wellness, and frankly, is an essential factor in weight loss. Sadly, sleep is often overlooked, and people sacrifice hours of restorative sleep to accomplish more during the day. According to WebMD, an adult should sleep 7 to 8 hours a night, but many people struggle to even get 5 hours. This can affect brain function, the body’s immune system, and can hinder weight loss.
Sleep is known to affect weight loss in many ways. When a person is sleep deprived, they crave simple carbohydrates and sugar, quick energy boosts which are not favorable for a healthy diet. We all know the feeling of being fatigued in the late afternoon and craving comfort food like a candy bar or slice of pizza. Poor sleep can also lead to mental imbalances like depression and anxiety, which can affect eating habits.
One of the most researched connections between sleep and weight loss has to do with hormones. Researchers know that hormone production during the day and at night during sleep play a key role in weight gain and loss. The two hormones responsible are leptin and ghrelin, which are used to modulate appetite in a kind of “checks and balances” system. Leptin tells the brain when it is full and ghrelin tells the brain when it is hungry. When you are sleep deprived, your body makes more ghrelin hormone than leptin hormone, causing your appetite to increase. This can translate to unconscious overeating and weight gain. Ghrelin has also been shown to decrease energy expenditure and change the body’s preferred fuel source from burning fat to using carbohydrates instead, which makes you crave more carbohydrate–rich foods. For this reason, ghrelin has been linked to increasing fat storage (adiposity). By maintaining a good sleep schedule, you can keep your leptin and ghrelin hormones in balance and your appetite regular. Proper sleep may well be one of the leading breakthroughs for fighting obesity.
Also, one of the primary keys to good quality sleep is the amount of time spent in the “R.E.M.” stage. R.E.M, which stands for Rapid Eye Movement, is the state of sleep in which the brain is most active. This active state burns more calories than the non-R.E.M. stages of sleep since it uses glucose to fuel brain activity. The more R.E.M. sleep you get, the more calories you burn, it is that easy!
PILLO1 can help improve your weight loss plan by allowing you to achieve a more restorative sleep with more time in the R.E.M. phase. In fact, in a sleep study conducted by St. John’s Sleep Disorders Center in Santa Monica, CA on the effects of PILLO1 vs. conventional pillows on quality of sleep, the study showed that PILLO1 helped people fall asleep 19 percent faster and that they had an INCREASE in R.E.M. sleep by a whopping average of 21.3%. This shows that PILLO1 can help you burn more calories during sleep as well as improve your cognitive and physical function during the day.
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Stay tuned for my next blog article on 5 simple ways to evaluate your sleep and make changes to achieve the best quality sleep possible!