Effect of Sleep on Fat Burning
In addition to a balanced diet and moderate exercise, good sleep quality is also important for fat burning. In the current fast-paced living environment, work pressure, study pressure, and family pressure make most people sleep later and later and sleep for shorter and shorter periods. The quality of sleep is closely related to the degree of obesity, and people who do not get enough sleep are more likely to gain weight.
How Sleep Affects Fat Burning?
Lack of sleep can affect the quality of exercise
Sleep deprivation is often when our body’s athletic performance is at its worst. Seven hours of sleep deprivation reduces the body’s maximum oxygen uptake and maximum power output while taking longer to recover.
Sleep deprivation can bring several reflections to the body, such as you may find yourself slowing down your reaction time. Slow reaction speed and the overall quality of movement will also follow the decline, the same is to do a movement before the hands feel good, but now do half feel out of breath. The quality of action has decreased, of course, the fat-burning effect will be greatly reduced.
Basic metabolism is reduced, fat burning slow
In the case of lack of sleep, people do not have enough spirit, and the body’s energy consumption is greatly reduced, which will slow down the body’s metabolism, resulting in the slowing of fat decomposition. In addition, the amount of activity during the day is relatively large, the muscles need sufficient rest to relieve fatigue and restore strength, if the lack of sleep, the muscles are not repaired, the level of the stress hormone cortisol will then increase, which leads to a reduction in muscle mass, becoming fat-prone, so that you unknowingly become fat
The endocrine environment changes, causing disorders
The quality of sleep will have an impact on the body’s hormone levels. If the sleep time is too short, the concentration of leptin in the body will drop and the level of the hunger hormone will rise.
Leptin is a hormone that makes people thin and suppresses appetite, thus regulating energy. The excessive secretion will lead to leptin resistance and too little secretion will promote fat synthesis, therefore, the only way to fight fat easily is to maintain a balance of leptin.
The hunger hormone, also known as an appetite enhancer, acts on the inferior optic thalamus to increase hunger, promote gastric acid secretion and gastrointestinal peristalsis, and help the body digest food.
Reduce insulin sensitivity
Insulin regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates in the body and maintains stable blood sugar. Lack of sleep can lead to high insulin levels in the body, affecting the normal metabolism of carbohydrates and making it easy for fat to accumulate.
When accompanied by chronic stress, it is more likely to lead to insulin resistance, insomnia, anxiety, stress, and a host of other reactions.
Stress and elevated cortisol levels
Sleep affects another hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is often thought of as the body’s “stress” hormone. Stress prevents your brain from relaxing and calming down, and even if your body is very tired, your brain is still racing when you lie in bed, making it harder to fall asleep.
This leads to elevated cortisol levels, and too much cortisol can disrupt your metabolism. At the same time, you will crave more sweets and fatty foods to relieve your nervousness.
In addition, elevated cortisol levels affect glucose metabolism (when lacking sleep, the brain uses less glucose, which is why without good sleep, you feel mentally unclear), reduce fat burning, lead to insulin resistance, and inhibit melatonin production.
Biological clock affects fat-burning efficiency
At what time of the day do you burn the most calories? Studies have found that biological clocks affect calorie burning, with the afternoon and evening hours burning 10% more calories than the morning hours.
A 2007 study by Harvard Medical School found that those who worked three shifts and had irregular sleep schedules had a higher risk of obesity. This suggests that maintaining a regular sleep schedule is important for burning calories.
In short, lack of sleep is a roadblock on the road to fat burning. Ensuring a good night’s sleep maintains the body’s hormonal balance and abundant energy, which also helps with weight loss. Diet determines direction, exercise determines efficiency, and sleep determines quality. Do all three and you will find it much easier to lose weight than before!