Importance Of Consistent Sleep
While much of my work with clients in McKinney, TX is about diet and exercise, I do also emphasize the need for consistent sleep. It’s not really a popular idea to get adequate sleep anymore. Part of our culture has become burning the candle at both ends and late nights at the office. Even people who don’t focus on work, focus on partying all night. Inadequate sleep can pose a health risk. It’s responsible for many accidental deaths from automobile accidents, but also affects the overall health of the body.
Your hunger hormones go crazy when you need sleep.
Have you ever noticed how hungry you get when you’re tired. Part of that comes from wanting a sugar high to boost your energy. However, it’s not all about needing energy. Lack of sleep plays havoc with your hunger hormones. The two hormones that influence how much energy the body needs by inducing hunger or the feeling of being full are leptin and ghrelin. Leptin tells your brain that you’re full and ghrelin tells the brain to break out the chips, I’m starving. When you don’t get consistent adequate sleep, you body produces too much ghrelin and too little leptin. That means your always hungry and it takes far more to feel full. That’s a real diet buster!
Sure you’re tired! Not only is your body dragging through the day, other changes are occurring.
Cutting sleep for a party or work occasionally isn’t a problem, the problem occurs when you regularly get too little sleep. It causes a great deal of stress on your body just to make it through the day. It also doesn’t give the body time to heal properly. That stress produces cortisol, just as it would if you were faced by a wild animal. Cortisol is associated with abdominal fat. The stress also causes inflammation and there’s where the serious problem occurs. Chronic inflammation causes fatigue, depression, gastrointestinal problems, weight gain and chronic infections. It also can cause rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, gum disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer.
You’ll slow your mental processing, too.
While you’re sleeping, your brain isn’t. It’s actually cleaning house. It maintains the neural pathways to make learning possible and organizes your thoughts and the day’s inputs for memories. During sleep, the toxins that accumulated throughout the day are removed from the brain. While you sleep, you dream, which scientists think may be how you process emotions.
- There’s no exact amount of sleep necessary for everyone. It varies from individual to individual. The average person needs between 7 and 9 hour if they’re an adult. There are a few that require more, with ten being their average and a few that require less, or approximately six hours.
- Good sleep hygiene can be attained in some cases by simply setting regular hours to go to bed and wake up in the morning. If you find your problem is poor sleep habits, stick with the schedule even on weekends.
- One study found that people who didn’t get enough sleep had slow responses when awake and activity in areas of the brain that are normally active during sleep. Those areas were napping while others were awake.
- Lack of sleep produces the same response when driving as driving while drunk. If you aren’t convinced to get more sleep for your body’s health, do it to avoid injuring or killing someone in an accident when you drive.
Creating a healthy home is just as important as getting exercise, eating healthy, getting adequate sleep and hydrating. You spend a lot of time in your home and if it’s brimming with toxic substances, all the work you’ve done to stay healthy can be for naught. Something as simple as a leak in the roof can cause black mold that can cause respiratory problems and chronic headaches. New carpeting, paint, varnish, furniture and other sources may release VOCs—volatile organic compounds—which are toxic and may cause respiratory problems and even nerve damage. What can you do to prevent it? Airing the house frequently is a start. Getting green carpet made from bamboo or other materials without VOCs or refurbished carpet is a solution, too.
You don’t want to be put on the sidelines by an injury to your ankles or feet. They do hold all your weight and have to be ready for a variety of moves based on the exercise you’re doing. That’s why good workout shoes are important. Your feet often provide the only point where your body meets the ground and your shoes need to cushion that contact even when your feet are in an awkward position. Different activities require support in different areas of the foot, so not only is it important to have shoes that support your feet, but also ones that support it while you’re doing a specific activity.
If you’ve ever heard the saying, “If you believe it, you can achieve it.” you might not see how it has anything to do with fitness, but it does. When you think fitness, you become fit. That’s because it’s the core of your focus. Rather than thinking how fat you are, how out of shape you are or even how much you hate working out, focus on everything you do that helps you get fit. It will help you find new ways to improve your fitness. If you’ve worked out for a while, focus on your improvement.
You don’t have settle for rice cakes or food that tastes like cardboard or vitamins if you want to eat healthy. In fact, healthy foods can taste delicious, especially if you add a little spice. Here in McKinney, TX, most people love food that wakes up their taste buds. That’s why adding spice not only helps you keep eating healthier, it also adds nutrients that provide other health benefits. Cinnamon is one of my favorite additions to meats and veggies and can reduce the amount of sugar necessary. It helps you control blood sugar and lowers the risk of coronary disease. Like most herbs and spices, it adds flavor and nutrition without adding calories.
You can change your health and your life at the same time. It’s not easy to make lifestyle changes, but well worth it when you find how they make your life much better. Something as simple as switching a snack from a sugary treat or highly processed food to a whole food can make a big difference in how you feel over time. You don’t have to make all the changes at once, you can start with just one thing, such as eating more whole foods and fewer processed foods. Build on that and before you know it, you’ll feel amazing and shed any extra pounds. By making small changes, it can lead to a whole different lifestyle.
When most people think of starting strength training, they picture body builders and bulky muscles. That is just one outcome, based on the trainer and the person they’re training if you’re a man. While some women can develop denser muscle mass, it takes hours of dedication for years and often supplementation for women to bulk up. Unlike men, they don’t have the body chemistry it takes to get big bulky muscles. In other words, if you’re a woman, you can drop that worry about looking like the Incredible Hulk when you add strength training to your workout. What you will get is a huge health benefit and a great, sculpted appearance.
Whether you want to lose weight or just eat healthier, snacks play an important role in your diet. Finding ways to add healthy snacks to your diet is easy. These snacks can be made from common foods you find in any grocery in McKinney, TX, so they’re not expensive to make, nor are the ingredients difficult to find. The role of snacks in your diet should be not only to add more nutrition, but also help keep you feeling fuller so you’ll eat less at meals.
If you’re suffering from back pain of any type, you probably want to stay in that easy chair and not move. However, that may be the worse thing that you can do. In fact, you can exercise away back pain in most cases. When you exercise you increase circulation and help build core muscles that can build strength and relieve the pressure that causes the pain. Be aware that not all exercises are appropriate if you have issues with your back. Abdominal crunches, double leg lifts burpees may actually exacerbate your condition. That’s one reason you should always check with your health care practitioner and let your personal trainer know about your condition.
To shed pounds, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. However, you need to pay attention to good nutrition for weight loss to be healthy. As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.” You’re not junk, so don’t eat junk. Too often people try fad diets that promise miracle weight loss. Unfortunately, the weight loss experienced is often water weight. Even worse, the weight comes right back when you go back to old eating habits. To make a difference, you need to learn how to eat healthier, exchanging one food for another and paying attention to good nutritional guidelines.