Why Sleep Is Vital to Achieving Your Fitness Goals
Imagine that you’ve been getting up for your morning workouts on time for months, eating healthy foods, staying hydrated as much as you can, and downing your post-exercise protein shakes - but feel like you’re not really seeing that much progress when it comes to improved health and fitness. You’re doing everything right, so what could be going wrong?
If this sounds familiar, the culprit could be a lack of sleep. It’s no secret that not getting enough sleep at night can lead to brain fog and leave you spending half your day trying to stay away, but it can also mess up your progress when it comes to working out. Proper nutrition and rest give your body the chance to recover after your hard workouts and become stronger than it was before. If you’re not getting enough sleep, this can lead to several issues that put a stop to your progress.
Lack of Sleep Can Cancel the Good Effects of Exercise
Being deprived of sleep doesn’t just leave you feeling tired and unmotivated; it can also pretty much cancel out any benefits you were set to gain from working out. This is because sleep affects how your body metabolizes the nutrients from your food, and plays a major role in how easily your body is able to recover. If your body can’t recover from your workouts and struggles to get the nutrients it needs to fuel due to a lack of sleep, you’re not going to see the results that you’d hope for.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Hormone Effects
Not getting enough sleep will also increase levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that can affect your weight, in addition to lowering levels of human growth hormone, which is crucial for tissue repair. And, if you feel completely done for after a short time of exercising, if that’s not the norm, you can usually thank a lack of sleep. This is due to glycogen, the carbohydrate store that your body keeps in order to use for fuel. Sleep deprivation results in a decrease in glycogen synthesis, which can have negative effects on your performance.
How to Get More High-Quality Sleep
The key to making the most of all your hard work keeping fit and being healthy is to make sure that you’re not undoing it all with a lack of sleep. But sometimes, this might not be for a lack of trying. If you go to bed at the same time every night and spend hours staring up at the ceiling unable to sleep, you might be suffering from insomnia and an herbal remedy like lavender pillow spray or chamomile tea could help. If you struggle to stay asleep at night and wake up in pain, it might be down to an old mattress that is no longer fit to support you. Upgrading your mattress to one that’s designed to provide tons of support to your spine as you sleep can help you avoid waking up throughout the night with back pain and other aches.
Finally, consider any other changes that you can make to your life in order to improve the quality of sleep that you experience. Sometimes, it’s the small changes like decluttering your bedroom, investing in a good pair of blackout curtains, or banning yourself from using electronic devices for an hour before you go to bed that can have the best effect on your ability to fall asleep and get a good night’s rest.
If you’re not seeing the results that you’d expect to after sticking to a strict health and fitness routine, a lack of sleep could be to blame. Making some small changes to your bedtime routine and improving your sleep environment can help provide your body with the rest it needs to make the most of all your hard work.
Make sure to follow me on IG @NadiaMurdock