Introduction And Background

Weight loss might be a simple concept; eat less and lose more. However, there are many other factors that affect it. It could be the kind diet you are following and whether or not you abide by its rules. It could be the amount of exercise you are doing along with it. And it could be the amount of sleep you are getting while dieting. All of these factors have a role to play in your weight loss process. Further we will discuss the sleep connection with the diet and address the issue of what happens when you are facing a lack of sleep in your daily routine.

Dieting At Its Best
Dieting is a healthy thing. Many people think that only obese people should diet and while it is a necessity for them, it can be a habitual thing for normal weighted people. Never put your body under the strain of a full stomach anyway and one should always eat a little steadily and not eat to their heart’s content. It can become a problem later on, especially if you keep gaining weight because of it. And dieting does not mean a crash diet but we’ll talk about that later. Right now you need to know about sleep.

The Sleep Connection With Dieting
When you are dieting, your major aim is to lose weight and lose it fast. The second aim is to get the best out of your diet and make sure you are losing as much weight as you can. Anything that alters it or hinders the process is bound to get on your nerves! Sleep can affect your diet a lot. Sometimes, even if you are making a huge effort towards losing weight, you just aren’t losing as much as you had planned on. It’s probably because you aren’t getting enough sleep. There have been many researches held that prove that not getting enough sleep has adverse effects on our diet and if one person can lose ten kilograms with enough sleep, he or she will only lose around six if they are deprived of it. This is how much it affects it!

How Can Sleeping Less Affect Your Diet?
So how is it that not getting enough sleep can affect the diet? Well, there are many ways as to how it can. Here are some of them in detail.

• If your body is not getting enough rest that means that you are probably tired and irritable and your metabolic rate is not as lively and fresh as it is used to being. If the metabolic rate has slowed down, we all know that means lesser calories are being burnt and that means your weight loss process has slowed down. Nobody wants that to happen! Metabolism is one of the most important things to take care of while dieting. Sometimes people even take in cheat meals once a week so that their metabolic rate does not go too down if they are doing a relatively stricter diet.
• Being sleep deprived makes you tired and irritable and that means it makes you less likely to follow your diet. Sometimes you let go of it altogether and before you know it, you’ve eaten this huge fast food meal and now regret it which again isn’t good for the entire process.
• At times you are so energy drained due to lack of sleep that you snack up on stuff to keep yourself awake. This means you will have more bars of chocolate, more energy drinks and definitely more coffee. All of these things are not at all preferable during a diet. But since you can’t sleep, this is what happens!
• Being sleep deprived also leaves you restless when you are trying to sleep. This also means that you are likely to have late night snacks to give yourself the satisfaction because let’s face it, all of us sleep better with a full stomach even if it isn’t what’s good for us.

How Much Sleep Is Good Enough?
One should sleep at least a minimum of seven hours daily. It is preferable if the seven hours are at night and in one stretch rather than taking hourly naps throughout the day which is extremely unhealthy and not at all good for the body. And this isn’t about dieting only. Eight to nine hours is healthy enough and seven is the minimum you should aim for.

Conclusion
The diet and sleep connection runs deep. If either of them is affected, we aren’t getting the best results. And sleeping does affect our diet a lot and vice versa. Hence, eat healthy and don’t go on crash diets and sleep well and don’t compromise on the hours. A balance between your routine and sleep is pretty important to this cause.