Hey FitFam!! Today I wanted to share some insight on the importance of sleep and how it affects your results.

But before I do, let me share a quick story about my son – Logan. We were visiting friends in Costa Rica and he became quick friends with their son because they both like the same things – sports, YouTube, video games, etc.

On the last night of the trip, we were heading to bed at 10pm and we told the boys they can stay up until 11pm but then they need to turn off the video games and get to bed. They agreed.

The next morning, my son woke me up at 6am and said “Dad, guess what. We pulled an all-nighter and it was awesome.”

My son is 10 years old so he thinks its a badge of honor to do something like this and that he doesn’t need rest.

Well, the next day he was WRECKED. He was moaning as we went through airport security and telling me his head was hurting. He couldn’t keep his eyes open.
That’s when I shared a valuable lesson with him…

You borrowed tomorrows energy, today.

There are choices that we can make today that can make tomorrow more difficult. Over consuming alcohol, not getting enough sleep, drinking caffeine late in the day.
They give you energy today and make you feel good but they will make tomorrow suck.

Now let’s talk about YOU and how sleep affects your results.

Sleep is when your body releases a key ingredient to fat-loss. A hormone called HGH or Human Growth Hormone. You secrete high amounts of this hormone when sleeping and when you skip sleep or get very little sleep you’re reducing your HGH.

There’s a famous sleep study where they compared two groups. The first group got 5 hours of sleep and the second group got 8 and the second group saw superior fat-loss results.

Here’s a few quick tips from the book Sleep Smarter that can help you optimize your sleep.

  1. You get deeper more restful sleep when it’s dark. Turn off an clocks, porch lights, phones or anything that shines a blue light in your direction. Get black out curtains or sleep mask if you need one.
  2. Blue light has been shown to stimulate your eyes and can make it difficult to get to sleep. Blue light is emitted from TVs, phone, tablets, etc. You can either turn them off one hour before bed or wear blue light blocking glasses.
  3. Colder temperature has been shown to also contribute to deeper, more restful sleep. The ideal temp is 65-68 degrees but if thats too cold, get the room as cold as you can stand it. Too much heat has been shown to disrupt sleep.
  4. If you want more sleep strategies, I recommend picking up a copy of the Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stephenson. It’s filled with 21 strategies to improve sleep.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because sleep is a HUGE part of getting fat loss and muscle building results. It’s easy to focus on training and nutrition but the third big component is sleep.

It’s where our bodies repair our muscles after being broken down and it allows our body to regulate hormones.

Sleep deprivation is a form of TORTURE that has been used on prisoners. Don’t torture yourself. This is something that can greatly improve your results and life span.