There is a link between sleep and fat loss. It’s our hormones.
If you’ve tried it all and still can’t lose fat, it’s probably your sleep. Getting good quality and quantity sleep is imperative to keep your hormones functioning properly. There are four major hormones associated with sleep and fat loss:
1. Leptin
2. Grehlin
3. Insulin
4. Cortisol
Leptin and grehlin are our hunger hormones.
Leptin is produced in the brain and signals to our stomachs that we are full, and to stop eating. Grehlin is produced in the stomach and signals to the brain we are hungry.
When we do not get deep sleep or when we are sleep deprived, our body is less sensitive to leptin and more sensitive to grehlin.
Obviously this is bad because now we have more hormones telling us we are hungry and less of the hormones that signal fullness.
Have you ever woken up hungover and felt ravenous all day? Well when you drink alcohol it can keep you out of deep sleep. This is a major part of the cause and makes it really easy to overeat.
Insulin is considered the storage hormone.
When we consume carbohydrates, these are broken down into sugars, and the very most simple form carbs are broken down to is glycogen, or blood sugar.
Once the glycogen is in our blood it needs to go somewhere for storage and insulin is the hormone responsible for this. It’s produced by the pancreas and shuttles the glycogen (blood sugar) into the liver as well as fat and muscle cells for storage.
When we do not get good quality sleep or enough sleep our body becomes a little resistant to insulin- even after just one night of poor sleep!
So what this means is that our blood sugar will remain elevated and we will go through peaks and valleys. So when it drops, our body will crave sugar to bring it back up.
Decreased sensitivity to insulin can also require the body to make more of it, and being that it’s a storage hormone, it means we are less capable of burning fat.
Cortisol is made in the adrenal glands and is a stress hormone.
The final hormone associated with sleep and fat loss is cortisol. Normal cortisol levels will peak about 30-60 minutes after waking. Cortisol is good because it’s what gets our body to respond normally to stressful situations like if you see a car coming it preps your body to run out of the way.
We can use cortisol to help us lose fat. Our cortisol is elevated during intense cardio and will help us burn fat, but we want to be sensitive to it so we can manipulate it for this. When it’s chronically elevated our body doesn’t care anymore and it won’t do it’s job as effectively.
When we do not get quality or enough sleep, our body is less sensitive to cortisol. It can also chronically elevate our cortisol and lead to bigger issues than just not being able to lose fat.
If you want to learn more about these hormones and what you can do to be able to sleep better and burn fat again, listen to my podcast with Sleep Coach Morgan Adams here.
Your Coach,
Kyra