The Amount of Sleep You Get Affects Your Weight & Health

If you are someone who is struggling with your weight, then sleep is important to you.  Getting the right amount of sleep each night is really important since it can increase the benefits of  a healthy lifestyle, such as diet and exercise. Getting the right amount of sleep each night can also diminishing the impact of those genetic predisposed factors. 

 

Did you know that even if you are genetically predisposed to being overweight, sleeping at least nine (9) hours, or more, each night can have a dramatic benefit for you.

  

Numerous studies have shown that people who sleep less than seven (7) hours a night tend to be heavier than people who get the amount of sleep they need. The biological mechanisms linking sleep deprivation to weight gain are numerous.  When you don't get enough sleep. your leptin (the hormone that signals satiety) level falls and your ghrelin (which signals hunger) actually rises. Sleep deprivation tends to lead to food cravings, particularly for sweet and starchy foods. With the lack of sleep, a persons brain searches or craves carbohydrates, for fuel. This leads to poor eating habits which then causes weight gain.

It has been shown that lack of sleep decreases the sensitivity of your insulin receptors. Thus causes your insulin levels to rise. This impairs your body's ability to burn fat which causes weight gain and increases the risk of diabetes.

So, with the information above, the natural question is, how much sleep does a person need?  As a general rule, adults need six (6)  to (8) eight hours of sleep every night. Now this is just a general rule. Some people may need more than nine (9) hours of sleep each night, especially those that are genetically predisposed to being overweight.

Pay attention to your body and how you feel when you wake up. Pay attention to your mind as well and consider your emotional state. If you feel tired upon once you wake up, chances are you need to sleep longer. If you are one who yawns throughout the day, that is a sign that you need more sleep.

As you can see, sleeping is extremely important. With everyone being so busy these days, its often thought that we can skimp on sleep on the weekdays and make up for it on the weekends. Unfortunately this recipe is not successful. Your sleeping habits need to be consistent, so you should be getting the same amount of sleep each night.

If you would like more information on this subject, you can check out this article 'Sleep curbs influence of obesity genes', on cnn.com

Incorporating Fitness In A Busy Lifestyle

A hectic lifestyle is usually the reason why most individuals cannot stay in shape consistently. A busy lifestyle is almost always given the blame when staying fit fails. Typically this results in an unhealthy lifestyle rather than a healthy one. Especially when ones career takes them away from home and from time to time. Finding and/or being able to stay on a fitness plan becomes very challenging when your life is ruled by limited time, stress or business meals tempt you to eat incorrectly. In this post we are going to look at some of the ways that you can stay fit even if you are extremely busy in your life and career.

Most people have goals for work and a very clear vision for their working life. Having goals is also a great idea whenever you start a new fitness plan. If you document your goals for your weight, the shape of your body and what transformations you want to make, you are more likely to find ways to make those happen. Monitor the gains or your achievements that you make towards the goals you have identified, it will help you to reinforce your commitment to your fitness program.Think of how achieving your goals this will make you feel and relate that to how it will improve your performance on your job. By doing this, fitness can become part of your lifestyle instead of something you don’t have any time for.

If your career has you working away from home, plan ahead to make sure you maintain your fitness routine. One example of this is to find and stay in a hotel with amenities like gym and a pool area, or something that allows you to keep up with your fitness routine. If the hotel doesn't offer anything, there may be a gym in the neighborhood of your hotel. Now, if these options are not possible, you can always exercise in your hotel room. There are plenty of exercises that can be done in your room.

You would make things much easier for yourself if you spelled out your fitness goals to business colleagues and associates, and let them understand the importance of healthy eating and drinking habits in your personal setup.

Effective time-management is really all that is needed to find those periods of time where fitness activities can be done. Example- Suppose you plan on going to the gym right after getting home from working all day. Finding the motivation to stick with going to gym you are home is probably going to be difficult, since you are tired and most likely will start to get comfortable and relax. So, it's a better idea of heading to gym before you head home.

Lets face it, everyone is busy. However, there are many ways you can make time for incorporating fitness into your life. In doing so, you are going to find many benefits, including being healthy and even raising your energy level which will help with your hectic life.