4 Ways to Invest in Your Sleep for Weight Loss & Better Body

Does sleeping help you lose weight? Well, science is showing us today that it could. However, poor sleeping habits actually make you gain weight. In this short article, we will take a look at why poor sleep can make you gain weight. We will also give you a few tips to help you use your sleeping hours to actually shed a few pounds.

 Weight Gain and Sleep Deprivation

Poor sleeping habits change how fat cells react within your body. According to Elevate Training Centre, a fitness bootcamp in Brisbane Northside, sleep deprivation harms the functioning of insulin production in your body. If you become insulin resistant due to poor sleeping patterns, the fats in your body will circulate in the blood and produce insulin at an excessive rate. This excess of insulin then ends up as stored fat in tissues such as your liver. In worst-case scenarios, sleep problems can lead to conditions like diabetes.

However, there is no need to fear. Here are a few tips on how to get a good night’s sleep every night. These tips will actually help you burn fat while sleeping, and the good news is you’ll gain other benefits that come along as well.

• Invest in a Mint Candle

Mint has been shown to suppress your appetite naturally. The Journal of Neurological and Orthopedic Medicine found that people who only took a whiff of fresh mint every two hours every day lost five pounds in one month. So, if you put a mint-flavoured candle by your bed, you can naturally get these appetite suppressing benefits while you sleep. This could really help you get over those late-night munchies.

• Turn up the AC

Can you lose weight by sleeping? Well, if it is cold enough, you sure can. The journal Diabetes reported that cold air could help you burn fat while you sleep. Colder temperatures increase brown fat in our bodies. We all have two fats in our bodies. White fat is the bad fat that comes from ingesting more calories than our bodies need which we do not burn off. Brown fat, however, is the good fat that helps keep our bodies warm in cold environments. The people in this particular study spent weeks sleeping in bedrooms with varying temperatures. After four weeks, the subjects who slept in the coolest room (set at 66 degrees Fahrenheit) doubled their amount of brown fat. This means they naturally lost a great deal of unwanted belly fat

• Cold Shower Anyone?

In the same vein as the last tip, it would be best for your sleep and your weight to take a cold shower before going to bed. A study published in the New England Journal showed that after exposure to cold temperatures, 23 of 24 participants saw a 15-fold increase in brown fat activation. By stimulating brown fat with a cold shower every day, you could be losing pounds without even having to lift a finger. Also, one study in Lille, France, proved that people who take a cool shower before bed have a better night’s sleep. Since the body naturally cools itself down as the day wears on, by taking a warm shower you are actually inhibiting your body’s ability to cool itself and help you sleep naturally. 

• Keep the Electronics Outside of the Bedroom

Perhaps it’s no shock that one of the reasons why we are having such difficulty sleeping nowadays springs from all tech gadgets. Research is showing that the more electronics a person has in his/her bedroom directly correlates with how heavy they are. The Pediatric Obesity journal reported that kids who are addicted to a nighttime “iPad fix” are more at risk to have poor lifestyle habits in the future than those who do not. Whether you have kids in your life or not, it is wise to keep all your electronic devices far away from where you sleep. Make sure your sleeping area is only for your beauty sleep.