The Secret Ingredient to Losing Weight

It’s January. For many people that means it’s time to start that diet, again. Finally you can lose the weight you have been wanting to shift for so long.  Diets are a tricky thing; we all know that one person who decides to go on a diet, and the weight seems to just drop off, and sadly we probably also know someone who eats all the right things, does plenty of exercise, drinks plenty of water and struggles to lose even a single pound. So just why is dieting so easy for some people when even losing a pound can be difficult for someone else.

There is a secret ingredient that you might be missing in your diet and it probably isn’t what you are expecting; sleep is a vitally important element of any diet, if you aren’t getting enough then you are probably not getting good news when you step on the scales.

Sleep

We have always been told how important sleep is, and how getting a good night’s sleep is really important for your health and general wellbeing. Now scientists have discovered that sleep may well be the magic ingredient that is missing in those unsuccessful diets.

There are two ways of looking at this, if you don’t get enough sleep you will need something to kickstart your day and really wake you up, and that when too many people reach for the oversized Latte – and if you haven’t checked how many calories they have in them, then you might get a shock. Then, of course, there is the fact that you will probably be really tired still so you will skip exercise, and these will not be the only bad decisions you make. It’s a simple sum – more calories in, fewer calories burnt at the very least this equals no weight loss at all. You may be lucky and still lose weight, but it will be small amounts and take you a long time, something that can make it easy to become disheartened and give up.

It goes without saying that if you are asleep you aren’t eating, which will help with your diet, but it is a little bit more complex than that. Depriving your body of sleep can cause a hormone imbalance, and it is the hormones you produce whilst you are sleeping that help with both your appetite and your body’s metabolism. This makes you more likely to consume extra calories, usually from carbs and sugar, and less able to burn off the calories from the food you are consuming.

Is it really that simple?

Okay, before you get the wrong idea, we are not saying that sleep will make you lose weight. Not on its own, you will still need to watch what you are eating and make sure you get plenty of exercise and drink plenty of water, but in combination with these a good night sleep of between 7 to 9 hours should really help to boost your weight loss journey.