You might be thinking “What does rest have to do with weight loss?”. We’re so glad you asked, because rest has everything to do with weight loss. Chronic unrest- lack of sleep coupled with a high-stress lifestyle- can nullify the best diet and supplement plan. We’ve seen this happen so often in practice. We counsel a patient who seems to be doing everything right. According to her food records, she’s eating exactly as prescribed, yet the weight isn’t budging. Then we dig a little deeper and learn that she’s up repeatedly at night to soothe her kids back to sleep, on the go constantly during the day, and draining herself further with intense exercise at the gym.
This type of unrest keeps the fight-or-flight response in a permanent “on” position. Our bodies are designed to handle periodic influxes of stress hormones. Triggering your fight or flight response just once a day probably won’t interfere with weight loss, because your body easily clears these hormones. Triggering it every 5 minutes? That’s a recipe for weight gain.
Here’s why. Every time you trigger your stress response, your adrenal glands pump out the stress hormone cortisol. If cortisol levels remain high- as they do when you don’t get enough sleep, keep yourself awake during the day by consuming lots of caffeine, or generally feel edgy and jittery- your entire metabolism becomes imbalanced, suppressing thyroid function, raising blood sugar and blood pressure, weakening muscles and bones, and triggering the body to store more abdominal fat.
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