sleep is important for fat loss

When it comes to fat loss the conversation usually goes in the direction of working out or your diet. Sleep is like the neglected third child that gets a mention here and there but never taken too seriously. 

I guess is kinda warranted, sleep doesn’t directly help you lose or gain weight in any significant shape or form. Sleep too much you’re not gonna gain or lose weight. Sleep too little not much is gonna happen too in terms of weight.

BUT…

(Ohh there’s a big “but” here.)

...sleep does play an important role in the process of losing fat. Lack of sleep can mess with your hunger hormones, in other words mess with your body’s hunger signals. It’s really not as serious or scary as it sounds, but it could be a factor that makes your journey way easier or way harder.

Lack of sleep can cause you to feel hungry and cravings at odd times, which of course if you got the discipline to fight through it then it’s no problem at all, it’s when you fail to fight through it that it becomes a problem.

I mean the weight loss journey already hard, it’s not like you need an extra thing you gotta worry about.

There’s been numerous times early in my journey when I didn’t fully understand the process yet that I felt quite confused cos there would be days where I felt extra hungry or craved at weird hours whereas the previous few days was totally fine and I didn’t change much in terms of diet or workout.

It took me awhile to figure out that it was sleep. On days that I slept 4-5hrs, the next day would be a hunger battle. I’d feel hungry faster, and seem to have a bigger appetite than usual. On days I got 7-8hrs of sleep I’d feel super good and never seem to ever get hungry to a point where it’s a “problem” that I have to deal with.

Just wanted to talk about this today cos there could be days where you indeed are being super perfect with your diet and workouts but somehow you just feel a lot more hungry than usual, that could very much be simply due to a lack of sleep. You don’t need to change or diet or workouts, you just need to sleep more.

7-8hrs daily is the recommended amount for sleep. Below 6hrs is usually when those hunger hormones starts to go out of whack.

Hope this helps, hope you’re well!

Till the next one~