In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Maria Popova says: “ Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honour that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue- but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and self-respect.”
In the past few articles we’ve emphasized a lot on importance of workout and diet but today is the time we bring in the third stooge and probably the most important one. Sleep.
Diet, workout and sleep are like the three legs of a chair to balance your fitness goals, skip on any one and one might as well throw it out of the window.
Once you start getting any one right, it starts to act as a positive feedback loop. A good diet will make you feel energized, which will help you train harder which in turn will help you sleep better. Infact the food you eat also has a major impact on the quality of your sleep.
Sleep is when your body recovers, repair and builds up the muscles worked during exercise.
Sleep cycles peak in production of some very important hormones like prolactin, luteinizing hormone and Growth Hormone while at the same time inhibits Cortisol (the stress hormone) and thyroid stimulating hormone.
Studies have shown:
Getting poor sleep every night can actually reduce metabolic rate - mostly by imposing hormone imbalances. This can easily undermine efforts to lose fat as a simple calculator won't account for factors such as sleep. If you're trying to optimize body composition, ensuring proper sleep every night is going to be an important factor to consider in your overall plan. ▪️ Source: Nedeltcheva, A. V., Kilkus, J. M., Imperial, J., Schoeller, D. A., & Penev, P. D. (2010). Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(7), 435-441.
Note: The diet and calorie intake was controlled in the study, so yes it is significant for us
Food items that can help you sleep a little better:
Almonds: These have high doses of Melatonin which help regulate circadian cycle. Also they’re tasty to snack on.
Warm Milk: Sip on some hot chocolate if you like reading your favorite book
Fatty Fish: Vitamin D and Omega 3 fatty acids helps regulate serotonin levels. (+10 for almonds again)
Kiwi fruit
Walnuts
Cottage cheese: Its satiating, protein rich and has casein which will help aid muscle repair as you sleep
So if you are putting in the hours and work in the gym and still unable to see significant change, maybe it’s time for you to not stress much and sleep on it. (quite literally)
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