The relationship between a lack of sleep and a lack of results
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Before I get into it, I hope you enjoyed these pics of sleeping puppies because oh my goodness they are so cute! I am using them to lure you into reading my post and I hope it worked:
You can be doing everything right. You can be training correctly, eating right, managing your stress levels - but if you are not getting enough sleep, all of this becomes obsolete.
In my opinion, sleep is the single most important attribute to a healthy lifestyle. This is our bodies chance to rest, recover and repair, physically and mentally.
Studies have been conducted on lack of sleep. One Psychological Study followed a man who stayed awake for as long as he could (I cant remember the name of it sadly) but I think he managed to stay awake for some crazy amount of time like 11 days. During this time, he started hallucinating, he was fatigued, and was just basically a shell of a human. After he slept for about 20 hours following this, he was never really the same again, this damaged his mental health sufficiently.
It is simple, if you go with no sleep for long enough, eventually you will die. Just like if you go without food or water, sleep is just as important as these, and it is often overlooked by many.
You probably wouldn’t go a day without eating, or just eating something tiny like an apple, so why do people proceed to go days in a row only sleeping a few hours per night? Think of food and sleep in the same category, sleep is just as, if not more important to live basically.
A lack of sleep is directly connected to our thyroid, therefore if you are not sleeping enough, this will hinder your metabolism and cause your body to store more fat, as it needs to conserve extra energy somehow.
I like to think about sleep like charging a phone. You can put a phone on charge for like 20/30 mins if it is on low battery and it will just about scrape by for a couple of hours, but unless you give it 2/3 hours, it will never be fully charged. If you don't get at least 7 or 8 hours of sleep, you will constantly be living your life at 50% battery or lower, looking for other ways to conserve your energy. But if you just sleep enough, until you are fully charged, you will see such a difference.
Sleeping enough can help us lift in the gym, it boosts our metabolism, it helps our mental health, suppresses Ghrelin, which is our hunger hormone. So we subconsciously probably end up eating a lot less when we sleep more, as we only eat when it is necessary. With less sleep, more food is needed.
Another point on sleep that I would like to touch on, is the relationship between sleep and alcohol. If you have a big night out and drink a lot, you may be familiar with the notion of “passing out” when you get into bed. It may feel like a deep sleep, and some people drink alcohol to help them fall asleep, but this will actually hinder your sleep/wake cycle. There are five stages of sleep:
Stage 1 (just falling asleep - are you ever drifting off, then you feel like you are falling and wake yourself up? This is the first stage).
Stage 2 (this is deeper than stage 1 but still a lighter phase of sleep, our heart rate slows, and body temperature drops, we spend about 50% of our sleep in this stage)
Stages 3 & 4 (these are known as the slow wave sleep stages, and these are the deepest stages of sleep, it will be very hard to wake someone up who is in one of these stages. It is in these stages that hormones are released, for example growth hormone and appetite hormones)
Stage 5 or REM Sleep (REM stands for rapid eye movement, and it is in this stage when we dream, this is when the mind is very active, and the body rests - we are basically immobile in this stage. We usually wake at the end of REM sleep - this is sometimes why you wake up in the night with a dead arm, if you have fallen asleep on your arm in REM sleep, you wont move, but then we wake up after and move it about to help regain feeling).
These stages are repeated throughout the night, and I think it is very important to be aware of what actually happens to our body during proper sleep. Alcohol induced sleep hinders these stages, and without these stages, sleep is not as effective. Sleeping pills have the same effect as alcohol. This is why you wake up still feeling so tired and groggy.
It is also important to listen to your body when it comes to lack of sleep. For example, I went out on Saturday, and was fully intending to train on Sunday and smash a heavy leg day - however, I had about 5 G&T’s, and went to bed at 2am. I then passed out and woke up at about 7.30am. This is 5 hours of shitty sleep, so maybe more like 1 hour of actual sleep all together. I really felt it, I was so tired the whole day, so I decided my body needed rest. Without meaning to in the afternoon on Sunday, I had a 2 hour nap from 3pm to 5pm, I then went to bed at 9pm that night, and woke up at 6.45am the next day. That is like 9 and a bit hours of sleep. Usually I never sleep more than 7 or 8 because my body thrives off this, and I don’t need more. But this is how much a night of drinking had effected my sleep.
I am not saying don’t drink, I am all for a good night out. But don’t do it every weekend, you will spend the whole of the next week trying to recover, and just when you have, it will be the weekend again, and this will just keep you stuck in a loop, not progressing. Have a good night out once a month maybe, and just enjoy a glass or two every now and then. It only takes two glasses of wine to hinder our sleep by 50% of what it should be. To me this is crazy, and I am not sure how many people, especially younger adults who are just starting out work in the city are aware of this. Listen to your body, if you become in tune with yourself, you will know when you need to rest and sleep.
I think the best thing for sleep is to set up a good bed time routine, I am a sucker for a routine, I really believe they are the best things ever, and everything just seems to improve when you have a good routine. Set yourself a bed time e.g. be asleep by 10:30pm if you have to wake up at 6:30am. 30 minutes before you want to be asleep, switch off your phone, turn the lights down, and either listen to a sleep meditation or read a book for a bit if you struggle to fall asleep quickly.
I am sorry this is so long, I always expect my blog posts to be really short when I sit down to write them, but then I just have so much to say and end up rambling on lol. Thank you so much if you have got to the end.
If you are still reading, I just wanted to quickly say that I am starting a weekly email thread for anyone who is interested. This will include recipes, workouts, and a monthly fitness challenge (I may throw in a free personal training session for someone lucky who takes part in the fitness challenge ;)). If this sounds like something you need, to help give you more knowledge and insight into health and fitness, please subscribe, it would mean the world to me. I just want to help as many people as I can understand what it means and how rewarding it is to live a healthy lifestyle. But I also want to keep it simple & fun. So subscribe to the right if you would be interested in this!
Thanks so much again for reading, and see you in the next one xxx