Sleep is a serious business! We all know not getting enough sleep is bad for us but it can have detrimental effects to your weight loss goals too.

The obvious reason of course, is that a lack of sleep will make you feel less likely to go and do your exercise workout because you just don’t have the energy. However there is a much deeper problem that will occur within only a few days of experiencing sleep deprivation. Let’s look at an example of two individuals trying to lose weight – they both exercise 3 times a week, combining cardio and resistance workouts and both try to observe a healthy balanced diet with the right amount of calories for their energy expenditure, yet one continues to consistently lose weight and the other struggles, why? Quite simply the successful weight loss candidate is getting enough sleep at night and the other is not.

The ‘science bit’ is extremely detailed, so to put it on a very basic level, not enough sleep wreaks havoc with your hormones! The body goes into a flat spin with several hormones becoming out of whack, impacting a number of systems. The seriousness of that goes far beyond the aesthetics of just weight loss alone, so it’s important to make sure you’re getting the right amount of sleep for you. This varies for each person but studies show that for most of us, between 7 and 9 hours of sleep a night is optimum.

Another aspect of being over tired is it often leads us to make poor food choices with larger portion sizes than usual, increasing the likelihood of weight gain and sending us further into a hormonal state of flux. Overall sleep really should be made a priority for our general wellbeing and to support our fitness and weight loss goals. There’s even an entire celebrity endorsed movement called ‘Clean sleeping’ and as funny as it sounds, I urge you to get involved and get some quality Zzzz’s!

– This Article has been published in the April edition of Life Magazine – http://www.lifemagazines.co.uk