Getting 8 hours of sleep is an ideal way to go but in modern-day, sleep is an area that most people seriously lack, even for HCG Dieters. Lack of sleep is oftentimes an overlooked cause of weight gain. Sleeping less than seven hours can actually make you gain weight even if when you are on a weight loss.
How important is sleep during the HCG Diet?
Sleep is just as important as getting nutrients from allowable foods while on HCG Injections, water, and exercise. It has a profound impact on hormones like insulin, cortisol, leptin, and ghrelin. The hormonal imbalances due to lack of sleep interrupt with your weight loss.
Why is a good quality of sleep important?
Sleep plays a vital role in your health and overall well-being. Here are some benefits associated with getting a good quality of sleep:
- Healthy lifestyle
- A low risk of being overweight or obese
- Better calorie control
- Stronger immune system vital to keep you safe from sickness and diseases
- Balanced hormones
- Energy and mood boost
- Increase productivity, brain focus, and performance
- Aids in muscle recovery
What will happen to your body when you lack sleep?
- Your body’s ability to respond to signals of insulin decreases. As a result, your fat cells are far less able to release lipids and fatty acids to produce energy. Your blood sugar level becomes high. Any excess sugar and fats that moves throughout your body will cause your pancreas to pump more insulin. Over time, this excess insulin will allow your body to store fats in various places in your body including the tissues in your liver resulting in unintended weight gain.
- Sleeping less than 5 hours can impact your leptin and ghrelin hormones. These two hormones are of great interest in regulating your appetite. Leptin is a hormone that decreases your appetite while Ghrelin is a “hunger hormone” that your stomach releases when it’s empty. Ghrelin stimulates feeding and may result in obesity. When you lack sleep, your leptin hormone is low. This stimulates the hunger hormone ghrelin making you feel hungrier and less satiated.
- As the ghrelin hormone increases, the opposite happens to your metabolic rate. When you lack sleep, your stress-response cortisol hormone is elevated. This makes you crave for foods and prompts your body to store more fats. It also prompts your body to use the soft tissue on your muscles as a form of energy. This means you lose more muscles while you gain more fat. With adequate sleep, most of the weight you will lose during the HCG diet are from fats and not muscle.
- Too much sleep, on the other hand, can also slow down your metabolism. Too much sleep can leave you with the same feeling of tiredness and drowsiness as too little sleep.
- Less sleep means more time to eat unhealthy drinks and foods to keep you going. Being sleep deprived may make you want to eat more than usual. When not on a diet, those who are sleep deprived tend to eat an extra 500+ of calories per day. Over a week, this could add up to a pound of weight gain.
- Lack of sleep will leave your body constantly tired and will naturally lower your energy level. To boost the energy level, most dieters will resort to more eating and snacking. Eating more calories than what is burned will definitely lead to weight gain. Tiredness has other effects on how efficient your body functions. An inefficient body tends to store more fats thereby making you gain weight.
More reasons to make you get more sleep
- Lack of sleep affects your ability to think and learn. You can’t focus well and you’ll find it difficult to pick information up, thereby, making learning not efficient.
- Just getting less sleep will not cause weight gain and health problems but insufficient sleep can lead to serious health issues like high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes.
- Not enough sleep can make your skin sallow and your eye puffy while chronic lack of sleep can lead to dark circles around the eye, fine lines, and pale skin.
- Sleep deprivation can cause accidents, forgetfulness, and long-term memory loss.
How to get a goodnight sleep on the HCG Diet
When you get sufficient sleep your hormones will function better. You make better food choices and you do not gain weight.
- Stick to a regular sleeping schedule so your internal body clock won’t mess up. Though this can be quite challenging for shift work, as much as possible try to get at least 8 hours of sleep.
- Improve your sleeping environment by making your bedroom a sleeping oasis. Keep the temperature between 60 to 67 degrees, use dark curtains to make your room as dark as possible, and clear up the clutter.
- If having a good night’s sleep for you is hard, take a melatonin supplement to help you sleep better. 2 mg of melatonin before bedtime can make you fall asleep faster.
- A pre-sleep routine like clearing up your thoughts can help you fall asleep faster.
- Steer clear from coffee because of the caffeine that keeps you awake.
- Read books to help you fall asleep. Try reading them in a semi-dark room.
- Keep your phones and laptops away as this can prevent your brain from releasing the melatonin hormones.
- Don’t eat just before bedtime. Don’t go to bed too full or too hungry.
