What if I told you there was one fat loss strategy that takes very little effort and is so effective it will actually help:
- Accelerate your fat loss (belly fat particularly)
- Balance your hormones
- Regulate your appetite
- Decrease risk of Type 2 Diabetes
- Reduce your depression
- Manage your anxiety
- Decrease your inflammation
- Improve your memory
- Help you live longer
- Decrease your blood pressure
- Help you handle stress more effectively
- and much more…
How much would you pay for something like this?
Well one option to get those benefits is you could go down to your family doctor and get a few prescriptions for a handful of pharmaceutical drugs that will take care of everything on that list. The cost for all that would be between $200-$1000+ every month, maybe more.
But my secret strategy will take care of all that, no pills involved and you won’t even break a sweat.
Best of all, it’s 100% free and you can do it in your sleep – literally.
That’s because my secret strategy is actually SLEEP!
Yes, it is possible to lose fat while you sleep.
In fact, improving our sleep is one of the most important levers we can pull to improve our health. It’s so important that if you don’t sleep for a day or two your body will start shutting down systems automatically to force you to sleep.
The problem is that in todays world of nonstop connectedness, the need to constantly be “on”, and glamourizing motivational slogans like “no days off”, “grinding” or the one I was guilty of saying for years, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, most people aren’t sleeping enough. And the sleep we do get is often spent tossing and turning, or being interrupted.
When thinking about your sleep there are 2 areas to consider – Quality & Quantity.
Obviously you want to aim for a 10 out of 10 in both areas. But often if you’re high in one area, you can get away with a little bit less in the other.
For example, if you’re able to sleep 9-10 hours a night, then you can get away with a little tossing and turning while staying healthy.
Alternately, if you’re getting really high quality sleep (meaning you fall asleep right away and don’t wake up through the night), you could possibly get by with 6-7 hours per night.
For most people the sweet spot is typically between 7-9 hours of decent quality sleep every night.
{Related: 11 Ways To Sleep Better & Wake Up Feeling Fresh}
But why is sleep so important?
The list we started this article with will give you a pretty good understanding of why sleep is so important. It impacts every physiological system in our body and acts as a sort of “refresh” button.
Let’s take a deeper look at a couple of the most impactful benefits of sleep.
Sleep Regulates Your Hormones
Many research studies have found that people with better sleep patterns have a better balance of the appetite regulating hormones ghrelin and leptin, among others.
Leptin is the hormone that tells you when you’re full while ghrelin tells your body it’s time to eat more food. As you can imagine these are fairly important hormones, especially when you’re trying to lose weight.
When you don’t get enough high quality sleep, your leptin levels drop significantly, so even when you eat plenty of food you don’t feel satisfied, which leads to overeating.
Now add an increase of ghrelin telling your body that you’re still hungry. Compound that over years and decades of poor quality sleep, and sprinkle in the convenience of ultra-processed foods – BAM – you’ve got a recipe for weight gain at the very least or obesity and Type 2 diabetes at worst.
Studies also show people with better sleep patterns also tend to have higher insulin sensitivity, which basically means they have a much lower risk of Type 2 Diabetes, becoming overweight or obese.
And these are just 3 of the many hormones affected by sleep. We’ll dive into how sleep, stress, and cortisol production all affect each other another day.
Sleep Helps You Lose More Body Fat
We talked about how sleep can affect weight loss through 2 appetite regulating hormones, leptin and ghrelin. But researchers from the University of Chicago took it one step further and found that people with better sleep patterns lost up to 55% more body fat, while holding onto more lean muscle during a weight loss plan – a double win.
Multiple other studies have found that people who sleep 6+ hours/night also tend to make better choices when it comes to food, which would also lead to better fat loss. Conversely, less than 6 hours of sleep/night was associated with increased poor food choices throughout the day.
Other research studies found that athletes who slept better (9-10 hrs/night) had better overall performance, less daytime fatigue and increased stamina.
And that’s not just important for athletes. Increased performance will help you perform better in your workouts which can also help with fat loss while potentially increasing your metabolism. Not to mention how much more enjoyable your life could be with less daytime fatigue and more energy.
It’s like a Circle Of Awesomeness, and all you have to do is go to sleep!
Take It To The Next Level
Getting better sleep is just 1 of the 4 levers we help our clients manipulate inside our 1-1 online Transformation Coaching Experience – the other 3 being properly designed workouts, sustainable nutrition and stress management.
If you’d like some more personalized help with all of this so that you can become the strongest, healthiest, most confident YOU, then I highly recommend scheduling a complimentary Transformation Strategy Call with one of our Transformation Specialists:
Simply take 5 minutes to answer a couple of questions and then choose a time that works best for you.
During your call, we’ll go over:
- Where things are at right now for you, what’s working/not working
- Where you’d like to be in the next 12 months
- Any obstacles or challenges you’re facing, and how to break through them to achieve your biggest goals!
At the end of your call you’ll have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have, and if it makes sense we can chat about getting involved with one of our coaching programs.
But either way, you’ll you have crystal clear clarity on exactly what you need to do to moving forward to achieve your biggest fitness, weight loss or transformation goals.
It only takes 5 minutes to schedule a call and there’s zero-risk, so do it now before it gets lost in the shuffle of life:
Looking forward to chatting.
-Cam