Can You Really Lose Fat Faster by Sleeping for Longer? Yes You Can!

Modern life can be very hectic, placing huge demands on your time and energy. To try and get as much done as possible, meeting work and familial obligations, many of us get by on less sleep than we should. Unfortunately, while sleeping less gives you more hours per day, it may also undermine your ability to lose fat.
Sleep deprivation has a number of unwanted effects on your body, including:

• Increased insulin resistance – this means that dietary carbs are more likely to be converted to and stored as fat.
• Increased cortisol production – cortisol if your stress hormone. Too much of it primes your body for fat gain, especially around the abdomen, and undermines fat loss.
• More cravings for sugary junk food – your body knows it needs more energy, and this is an obvious source.
• Less willpower – you’ll be much less inclined to exercise and eat healthily when you are sleep deprived.
• Less energy – you’ll feel tired, and that may make you think you don’t need to exercise. However, mental and physical tiredness are two very different things.

Getting more sleep is not always easy and staying up late is very habit forming. But, with some effort and commitment, even the busiest person should be able to get the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep per night. And no, you can’t just sleep more at the weekend to make up your sleep deficit. The damage caused by sleep deprivation happens the night you fail to get enough sleep.
Here are five strategies for getting a good night’s sleep.

1. Reintroduce bedtime

It’s probably been many years since you had a bedtime, but it’s time to bring it back. Having a bedtime will train your body when to expect sleep, and also make sure you go to bed early enough to hit your sleep quota.
Work back from the time you need to get up to make sure you are in bed 7-9 hours beforehand. This may be surprisingly early, especially if you have to get up at the crack of dawn. However, that’s the only way you are going to get the amount of sleep your body needs.
As well as a set bedtime, it’s also a good idea to have a set wake up time – for both weekend days and weekends. Avoid sleeping in too late at the weekends as this will just make waking up early on Monday much harder. Limit your weekend lie-ins to about an hour.

2. Remove distractions from your bedroom 

There is no point going to bed early if you then spend the next few hours watching TV, using a laptop, or talking or texting on your phone. Make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary by banning any and all distractions. If you need something to do before you shut your eyes and go to sleep, get a book.

3. Buy a decent bed, pillows, and bedclothes

Most people spend more money on their car than they do on their bed, and yet spend much more time sleeping than they do driving. A comfortable bed will enhance your sleep, while an uncomfortable bed could keep you awake all night. The same is true for pillows and bedclothes.
If your car cost more than your bed, you may need to change your spending priorities. Quality beds, pillows, and bedclothes aren’t cheap, but you’ll soon notice the difference.

4. Avoid caffeine from the late afternoon onwards

Caffeine gives you energy. It can also disrupt your sleep. Drinking tea, coffee, or cola, or eating chocolate late in the afternoon or in the evening can stop you from sleeping. Of course, if you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll need caffeine to give you energy to get you through your day. It’s a vicious cycle!
Introduce a caffeine curfew of around 3pm to make sure that there is none lurking in your system to disrupt your sleep. This may be hard for the first few days, but once you start getting enough sleep per night, you should no longer experience an afternoon energy slump.

5. Have a small snack before you go to bed

Contrary to popular opinion, eating right before bedtime will not lead to weight gain. Providing you do not consume more calories than you need per day, the food you eat before bed will simply contribute to your daily calorie needs.
A small snack before bedtime will help raise your serotonin levels which will lead to relaxation and deeper sleep. This is not an excuse for a midnight feast – a small snack is all you need. Good options include:

• A small bowl of porridge or sugar-free cereal
• A cup of natural Greek yogurt and raw honey
• Mashed avocado on 1-2 brown rice cakes or wholemeal bread
• A sliced apple with a tablespoon of natural peanut butter
• A glass of warm milk with a tablespoon of honey

Do not underestimate the importance of sleep for fat loss. It’s amazing to think that something so passive can have such a big impact on how quickly and easily you lose weight. Yes, you CAN get by on less than 7-9 hours sleep, but that doesn’t mean you should. Stop depriving your body of sleep, and you’ll not only have more energy, you’ll lose fat faster too.

How to Beat Work Stress in Five Simple Steps

Stress, for many people, is an unavoidable fact of life. Work stress, financial stress, commuting stress, familial stress, emotional stress – stress is everywhere! The thing is, it’s not stress that’s the problem but our response to it.

When you are stressed, your body goes into “fight or flight” mode. Fight or flight was once a very useful process that kept your ancestors alive.

Picture the scene: 10,000 years ago, you’re in your loincloth walking through the jungle searching for food. Out of nowhere, a tiger leaps out at you. In that instant, your body goes from zero to one hundred miles-per-hour and dumps a huge amount of adrenalin into your system.

This results in:

·         Elevated heart rate

·         Increased blood pressure

·         Blood diverted away from the digestive system and into your muscles

·         Your pupils narrow

·         You start to sweat

·         Lots of glucose is dumped into your blood

·         Your muscles become tense

·         You are ready to fight or run for your life!

Being a hardy soul, you turn and run like the wind and, thankfully, you escape the tiger. You reach a safe haven, sit down, catch your breath, and relax. Slowly but surely your body returns to its pre-stress state – commonly called homeostasis.

Unfortunately, your body responds to mental stress in the same way it does physical stress. A little stress is good; it’s what gets you up in the morning, makes sure you hit your deadlines, or perform at your best on the squash court. However, constant stress is exhausting and can cause many mental and physical problems.

Stress, or our response to it, causes systemic inflammation and some experts believe that inflammation is the trigger for almost all illness – including cancer. Stress also increases the production of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone that, in excess, causes muscle breakdown and inhibits fat loss – a deadly duo if you care about your fitness, appearance, and health.

It’s important to reiterate, your body cannot differentiate between physical and mental stress. It responds the same way to a near-death tiger incident and your computer crashing for the fifth time in an hour. With the tiger scenario, you can “work off” that stress by running or fighting for your life. However, it’s not acceptable to smash the living daylights out of your computer even though doing so would probably be a good release of stress.

Because of how stress can affect you, it is essential that you learn to avoid and cope with stress more effectively.

Here are five strategies for beating stress in the workplace:

1. STOP PROCRASTINATING SMALL TASKS

Procrastinating means putting things off – often for no other reason than they are things you don’t want to do. This often means that unwanted small tasks add up and that makes them even less appealing. Left long enough, those initially small tasks can become big issues that increase your stress levels.

Instead of putting small jobs off and allowing them to snowball into big issues, stop procrastinating and get them done as they arise. You’ll feel much happier and less stressed knowing that those small but unpleasant chores are done. 

2. PRIORITISE YOUR TIME

There are only 24 hours in the day, so it’s important that you spend your time wisely – as you would money. If you have a full diary, spend a moment putting your tasks into priority order. Spend your time on the most important tasks of the day, only moving to the less important ones once the big jobs are done.

This is NOT the same as procrastination. Instead, it’s simply making the most of your most valuable resource – your time. With the most important tasks completed, you should then be able to dedicate your remaining time to those less-urgent tasks.

3. LEARN TO DELEGATE

Although this is not always possible, delegating can help reduce your stress levels. If you have a long list of jobs to do, and you have put them into order of importance, see if you can unload some of them onto someone else. Maybe arrange for your groceries to be delivered instead of having to hit the supermarket on your way home from work for example.

Unloading just a couple of less-important tasks per day could mean you have a lot more time to spend on what really matters.

4. TAKE A BREATH…

Stress can mean that you are constantly acting reactively, and if you feel stressed, your reactions will often be hot and fiery. In most cases, this will make a stressful situation worse and not better; stress is contagious!

Instead of reacting instantly to everything and everyone around you, spreading your stress, take a breath and compose yourself before acting or responding. In a lot of cases, reacting calmly will defuse the situation and reduce your stress levels in the process.

5. MAKE TIME TO EXERCISE

Exercise is the perfect antidote to stress. It helps reduce anxiety, provides a physical outlet for that “fight or flight” response, and pumps you full of feel-good endorphins which improve your mood and outlook.

Of course, lack of time may be your main stressor, and finding time to exercise can seem impossible, but even a few minutes of vigorous exercise can help. And it’s a good investment of your time as you’ll be more productive afterward.

Walk, cycle, or run to work, grab a quick workout during your lunch break or after work, or just go for a walk to escape the office for 15 minutes. Any and all exercise can help lower your stress levels.

Prolonged exposure to stress can increase fat gain, especially around the abdomen, and may even shorten your life. Modern like is increasingly stressful and almost everyone needs to learn how to control it when it’s unavoidable. If you are a “stress head” who knows that they are more susceptible to stress, this advice is doubly important.