New Delhi: Apart from a strict diet, rigorous exercise, and hours of running, what can be essential for losing weight is sound sleep. People try out different methods but at times fail to lose weight. One of the crucial reasons is that they do not get sufficient sleep. Award-winning nutritionist Loveneet Batra shares how sleep is important for the weight-loss journey.
Taking to Instagram, Loveneet Batra talks about the importance of sleep for weight loss. She posted a reel with the text – “Looking for the simplest weight-loss hack?… Don’t ever compromise on your sleep quality.”
See the video here:
In the caption, she mentioned that sleep is like nutrition for the brain. Following this, she states that if the aim for someone was to lose weight, skipping sleep was “like pocking sticks in your bicycle wheels.”
Here are some impacts of having inadequate sleep:
- Inadequate sleep can lead to an increase in cortisol levels (cortisol is the stress hormone) leading to more stress and hunger.
- It can also interfere with the body’s ability to process carbohydrates causing the blood sugar level to increase and lead to the deposition of fat.
- It can drop the levels of leptin hormone leading to more craving for carbohydrates and resulting in a bad diet and increase in body weight.
- Further, it can lead to the reduction of growth hormones. These hormones help in maintaining the proportion between fat and muscle.
Through these, the nutritionist linked sleep to weight gain, saying poor sleep cycles lead to poorer food choices, more carbohydrate intake, and less physical activity accounting for overall weight gain.
Loveneet suggested that at least sleeping seven hours every night can help in losing weight and health management. Besides, she suggested that to fix one’s sleep schedule, avoid blue light 1 hour before one goes to sleep and use relation techniques like reading, meditating, and having chamomile tea to have a sound sleep.