Is Sleep REALLY That Important
The Challenge
As busy people, it can be very difficult to get good sleep.
One potential barrier could be your work life.
You may work late nights, early mornings, long hours or have strange shift patterns.
It may also be the case that you have a tough time switching off from work when your head hits the pillow and spend the first few hours in bed staring the ceiling praying to fall asleep.
Another potential barrier to sleep could be your family / social life.
You may want to stay up to spend time with your significant other or perhaps you have young children that cause a consistent lack of sleep.
Or maybe you just don’t see the value of sleep and you’d rather spend time binge watching Netflix.
But..
Improving Sleep is One of the fastest and most effective ways to look, move & feel better.
My story of sleep
In March 2020 it had just been announced that we were entering the first lockdown.
This wasn’t a particularly good time for me.
I had been engaged for just 3 weeks wasn’t able to see my fiancé… on top of that I also had to shut the gym with no idea when we could reopen.
Safe to say this was a very stressful time.
After processing things for a couple of days, I decided to make effective use of my time to focus on getting in shape.
I put together a great training programme and was spot on with my nutrition.
After 10 weeks of being totally dialled in, I genuinely looked no better!
So why didn’t my training / nutrition work??
It was because my sleep during this time was horrendous!
I’d be up extremely late, sleep terribly and waste mornings in bed.
(this had a lot to do with being stressed-out)
But, things began change…
I could see my fiancee again and I started to get more involved with various projects at work.
My stress levels began to drop and I began to sleep well again.
Despite changing nothing about my training or nutrition I then steadily got leaner, week in, week out and got into the best shape of my life to date.
So, with that little story said, let’s unpack a few lessons.
We’re going to look at the impact on lack of sleep in 3 areas.
body composition
Sleep has both a direct and an indirect effect on your ability to lose body fat and maintain lean body mass.
Researchers found that when dieters cut back on sleep over a 14-day period, the amount of weight they lost from fat reduced by 55%, even though their calories stayed equal.
Not only this …
They also reported feeling hungrier.
Struggling with increased hunger makes controlling our calorie intake an uphill battle.
This means it’s easier to give in to food cravings and over consume calories.
As well as increased hunger, the group also reported having lower energy.
This means that training would be much more difficult.
If you managed to workout at all, you’re not going to perform as well which is going to negatively impact how beneficial that workout is.
And it’s also very likely that daily movement would be limited too.
The combination of all of these things make controlling your levels of body fat, very challenging.
Not being able to maintain a healthy body composition is going to leave us looking and feeling not at our best… All stemming from a lack of sleep.
Health
As well as how we look and feel… sleep is going to have an impact on our health.
Not getting enough sleep leads to reduced immune system function.
This can increase your risk of:
Heart disease
Stroke
Obesity
And mental illness
A lack of sleep will also drive up your main stress hormone, cortisol.
When cortisol levels are raise for long periods of time, it’s very harmful to the body.
Also, this leads to a number of other hormones becoming imbalanced.
Basically… everything gets messed up!
Performance
Even in the short term, a lack of sleep is going to effect performance.
As busy people, we want to be at our best to deliver on the many responsibilities that we have.
Making sure that we have adequate sleep is going to let us be at our best!
One area performance will improve is at work.
Getting enough hours of high-quality sleep helps improve our cognitive function, which is very useful at work.
It supports numerous aspects of thinking including memory, problem-solving, creativity, emotional processing, and judgment.
Also if you have a job that requires you to have a very good-reaction time, such as a paramedic, it’s important to be topped up with plenty of sleep.
We can also improve performance at home.
At home, it’s important to maintain good relationships and have a happy mood in the home.
Lack of sleep is very closely linked to depression, mood swings and anxiety.
This can make it very difficult to have the patience necessary to keep a peaceful home environment.
If we are consistently short on sleep, it can have serious ramifications on our work and home lives.
So if you’re interested in performing at your best not just in the gym, but in all environments, sleep is essential.
In summary
We’ve looked at a lot of the harmful effects that occur due to a lack of sleep.
Hopefully that’s helped you to appreciate just how important sleep is!
But let’s finish with a positive spin!
Improving sleep is available to all of us and we can work on it straight away when you go to bed tonight.
If we can successfully do this, there are so many benefits available.
Looking at your best.
Training well.
Looking after your long term health.
Feeling energised on a daily basis.
Managing Stress.
Being sharp mentally for work.
And being the best version of you for the people closest to you.
With that said…
lets consider a few top tips to improve your sleep tonight.
Top Tips
Make sure you have an environment that supports good sleep:
A cold room
A completely dark room
A comfortable bed
Try and avoid any sleep distractions:
Put your phone on a setting that won’t disturb you, or leave it out the room.
Use ear plugs if you need to drown out any annoying sounds, like your partner snoring.
And my personal favourite top tip for anyone who has a busy mind.
Keep a pen and paper by your bedside
Write down every single thought in your head until there is nothing left.
You’ll be amazed just how effective that can be for getting you relax.
If all else fails.. there is always counting sheep
Yours in coaching,
Harry