John Lark, personal trainer in dublin provides us with a unique look at how sleep may be the missing piece in the jig-saw puzzle.
Imagine if there was one strategy that could literally ignite your fat loss efforts and required little more than putting your head down on a warm, snug and inviting pillow and getting some zzzzs.
Hard to imagine isn’t it.
But this is the key with fat loss.
Rather than worry about the small things in our plan of attack i.e. how much, how often and or what to eat, drink, take, sip or chug. Why not concern yourself with the bigger picture.
After all this follows nicely with the whole 80-20 principle that works a treat with fat loss success. That is, 80 per cent of your results will come from 20 per cent of you actions.
I will say though that it is the twenty per cent performed consistently that brings the rewards.
In this case, sleep is one of those heavy hitting strategies and certainly one of the more pleasurable tools to fat loss.
Imagine that each night you plug a set of batteries into the wall to recharge and each night you take them out half way through their charge. Sure they will give you a kick into action, but certainly far from long lasting.
Now allow those batteries to take a full charge. They will go all day for you. No matter what you do.
The same can be said with regards your sleep habits. Ignore them at your peril. Sleep is crucial to your health, well-being and vitality. It is time when our hormones recharge, our immune system obtains further fuel to fight our increasingly toxic environment. With both of these firmly in place, fat loss is a nice by product.
From a personal experience there is a positive correlation between those who are night owls and those who suffer from weight gain and excessive weight changes.
Do you sleep less than 8-10 hours night? Do you find it hard to wind down at night and seemingly get everything done? (I used to be like that) or do you sleep for four hours a night, dog it out everyday and then come the weekend or holiday time sleep for the week? Do you wake up in the night?
If you answered yes to any of the questions then, life aside (kids etc), then you may have a sleep issue.
We really need sleep. I remember when I was a young buck being privy to some really exciting experiments back in university.
They had a ‘sleep lab’ there. I was one of the rats. In this particular experiment they shone a light over our bodies as we slept and monitored our response to sleep.
This is all whilst we slept. They recorded how we responded to say having a light shone on the sole of our foot (no where near our eyes). Interestingly enough, this light or exposure to light was enough to drag us from the land of nod and into semi-consciousness.
I am glad I did that experiment. It wasn’t until I was training between exercises with one mum that she remarked that she was having sleep problems. Indeed, the whole family were. The children were wakening, the mum woke feeling like she was drugged every morning and the husband was tired and ratty.
I asked her what the room was like and if she left the light on at night.
“Yeah…we leave the landing and bathroom light on for the kids…my room is pretty bright too”
A lightening bolt descended (not really but it adds to the dramatic nature of this ‘awakening’)
“How about turn all lights off and black out your room completely?”
So amidst the protestations about Jonny tripping over the cat to get to the bathroom and Annie hitting her toe off the skirting boards, she tried it. It worked. Immediately.
It didn’t work for the husband though so I recommended some foods and nutrients that she could explore to help him with this.
Imagine, no more kids waking up and fresh as a daisy in the morning.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Here was me feeling like I had just ‘done my bit’ for all of humanity by sacrificing a nights sleep in a ‘sleep lab’ then to share my experience positively with a lady in dire straights.
Sweet Dreams.
For your free personal training asessment at locations in kildare and dublin call us now at 01-5052131.
www.spherefitnessstudio.com – Personal Trainers in Dublin
