Not a day goes by when a new diet comes out and a new healthy living fad is created. The idea of this is then pushed upon us by celebrities, fitness personnel and more.
Even fitness accounts on Instagram will peddle new ideas, workouts, and thoughts through our screen to prove to us just how great they are at working out, while maintaining that health and fitness is an enjoyable lifestyle, yet not covering the fact that hard work, attitude, and dedication are the key attributes to succeeding in a health-obsessed world.
As their followers increase they are under pressure to continue feeding us, not with food, but with information and routines while showing off their fantastic bodies, making us both jealous and unmotivated at the same time.
But the trouble with groups of people who consider themselves ‘fitness freaks’ is that they often leave out important information about healthy living that needs to be noted by each and every person who is looking to improve their fitness and standard of living.
Habit are important
It’s not all about food and workout but habits that you have around the house, too. Habits like sleeping. Getting the right amount of sleep can make a huge difference to your health.
Weight loss is very hard, and it’s also very different to being healthy. Considering weight loss, a health success is only looking at half of the picture.
You’re losing weight but at what consequence? If you’re looking to lose weight this is all well and good, but your body still needs the correct nutrients from food and water to continue doing what it needs to do – to continue functioning properly. It also needs other things to work properly, and one of these things is as mentioned earlier: sleep.
Sleep has massive effect on your body
The effect sleep has on the body is massive. Obviously, it gives you the rest you need to recover from the day’s events but also helps you relax, recharge your batteries and set you up for the next day.
A person’s metabolism improves or decreased depending on the amount of sleep, with less sleep causing problems for your body in controlling blood sugar levels and even having an effect on how much hungrier you are when you’ve not slept well.
Your body will need more energy if you sleep poorly, energy which you only get from food or sleep. A lack of one means the need to compensate on the other.
If you’re being told constantly to workout and cut down on food, it is massively important that you’re getting a great level of sleep through the night.
This doesn’t purely mean hours, either. It means the actual quality of sleep you’re getting. How deep is your sleep and how often are you waking up?
Do you find yourself lying awake at night for long periods or do you drift straight to sleep and wake up fresh and ready to go the following morning? Whichever one it is could prove how your health regime is fixed.
Improving Sleep Easily
Improving sleep isn’t easy but attacking it as a lifestyle change is a little simpler. Firstly, you need to consider what exactly wakes you up through the night. Is it stress? Is it sleeping conditions? Or is it a habit? Maybe a mixture of both.
Before go trying to sleep at 8pm each night, take a think about that question and see if anything obvious jumps out at you. The more obvious to you, the easier it might be to tailor your sleeping arrangements to help you in the long run.
What is your sleeping situation like? Do you sleep alone? Or with a partner? It may be surprising but people often have huge difficulty falling asleep with others around or in their bed.
It’s not a nice thought to have, but it does happen. Why not experiment with sleeping separately from your partner if you can and seeing how this changes your sleeping pattern over a number of days. It might be that you’re subconsciously claustrophobic in bed with someone and need your own space.
Also, what are you sleeping on? Your bedding can have a massive effect on the quality of sleep you get during the night. You may need a firm mattress but sleep on a soft one, or visa-verse.
Selecting a proper mattress
Similarly, your pillows can have a really big effect on you, with too many giving you a pain in the neck and being uncomfortable, therefore waking you up too often in the night. These types of problems could occur to you when you don’t even realize.
Figuring these things out is very important.
Similarly, the time of the day you choose to exercise (if you do?) could have an effect both on sleep and on weight loss. If you go for a run or spend some time at the gym later at night, you might find that your mind can’t switch off from the outside world once you get in bed.
Working out gets your blood flowing and your mind going and it would be no surprise that working out may make your body tired but only serve to help wake your mind up.
Try working out straight after work (if you have a 9-5 job) or earlier in the day and switching yourself off closer to bedtime instead. It’s a good idea to read before bed but switching off from electric product close to lights-off time is a great idea. The lights in phones and laptops have a poor effect on your brain, waking it up in the process.
All of the pointers I’ve given and things that I now do. They’ve helped me and I’m sure they would help you too. Don’t just try them for a day, though.
Make sure you’re trying these out for long periods of time to allow them to have the desired effect and kick your bad sleeping habits to the curb.
