Got Sleep?

If you do not get enough sleep, you will:

1. Completely cock-block your fat loss.

2. Get fat, sick and diabetic.

3. Get old and wrinkled before your time.

When I was reading The Paleo Solution by Rob Wolfe, this really captured my attention. I don’t want to be fat, sick and have wrinkles! Because I am such a night owl, I constantly struggle with not getting enough sleep. Usually, the hardest part of my day is just getting out of bed. Before I read about the benefits of getting enough sleep, I didn’t know what an impact it can have on my health. For instance, it causes insulin resistance which causes fat storage around the waistline. So basically, it adds muffin to the muffin top. Also, your immune is compromised, you can be forgetful, moody and your protein collagen (what is responsible for youthful skin) is destabilized. We all work so hard to eat well (Paleo) and to work our bums off at each CF class. Not getting the right amount of sleep can actually negatively impact all that hard work we are doing. Now on to a couple of benefits of getting enough sleep: you will recover faster from exercise, better memory, less inflammation and you will be less grumpy in the am (or maybe the grumpy part is just me.)

Everyone should be getting 8+ hours of sleep. A good indication that you are getting enough sleep is that you wakeup with out the aid of an alarm clock. If you are not doing this, here are some tips:

1. Blackout your room* – Spend a little money on blackout curtains or you can even use black trash bags if you don’t mind how it looks from the outside. Remove any light source from tv’s, chargers and even the alarm clock. I actually just place something over my alarm clock that blocks the light.
2. Develop good habits. Try to go to bed about the same time each night.
3. Keep your room cool. As we sleep, our body temperature rises.
4. Don’t watch TV while lying in bed before you go to sleep.

Since I have started to get more sleep and blacked out my room, I really have noticed a difference. I don’t crave candy and salty food as much throughout the day. Also, I used to be able to take a quick nap at almost any time of the day. Now, I can’t nap. I don’t need to. And my coworkers don’t annoy me nearly as much in the am now. Ha! I hope they never see this.

* Straight from The Paleo Solution about why you should blackout your room. The porphyrin proteins that make up your red blood cells register light and carry this info of light exposure to your brain. This info blocks a very important antioxidant hormone/neurotransmitter called melatonin. This process is at the heart of your problem with cortisol.