Don't Forget Your Zzz's

We turned the clocks back this past weekend, which means we had the opportunity to get an extra hour of sleep.  Did you take advantage of that?

Did you know that sleep, or the lack of sleep, has a dramatic impact on your health, including your weight?  Along with poor diet and inactivity, poor sleep is a major contributor to living in an unhealthy state.

In his book, Dr. A's Habits of Health, Dr. Andersen, Take Shape for Life's co-founder and Medical Director, writes that getting too little sleep disturbs appetite regulation, giving sleep deficiency the potential to be a major factor in obesity.  He cites research on 28,000 adults and 15,000 children which showed that less sleep almost doubled the risk of obesity, even in children as young as five.  Dr. Andersen explains that when we're sleep-deprived, our body secretes excess ghrelin, a hormone that increases appetite, and less leptin, a substance that tells us to stop eating.  Lack of sleep also prevents our bodies from replacing dopamine and serotonin, two brain chemicals that bring comfort and satisfaction.  Guess what?  If we're low in those two brain chemicals, we will crave sugar and other high-calorie foods.

And we thought getting healthy was just eating right and moving our bodies! 

In our fast-pace society, sleep is something we're tempted to compromise.  When I worked full-time, I rarely got more than 6 hours of sleep a night because I stayed up too late and then had to get up for work.  It wasn't until I went back to work that the weight really piled on, and while I blamed it on inactivity, sitting in front of a computer all day instead of being a busy stay-at-home mom, I now realize that my chronic sleep deprivation may have played a part as well.

We need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep every night.  If we aren't getting that, we are not only compromising out health (Dr. Andersen also writes about the link between lack of sleep and increased inflammation and a higher risk of cardiovascular incidents, anxiety and depression), but we may be making it harder to stay on plan and get to a healthy weight.

So as you are making other choices about your health today, what you're going to eat and how you're going to move, what about what time you're going to go to bed?  That's another habit of health to develop as you continue your journey!  Getting healthy requires a series of choices that, working together, will enable us to create optimal health in our lives.  Choose wisely :-)