It is no secret that lack of sleep is strongly associated with the amount of body fat that you carry. This is especially true with your Belly fat. Poor sleeping patterns can affect your circadian rhythm and lead to changes in your hormone levels. More specifically, growth hormone and cortisol levels may be thrown out of whack. Growth hormone is one of your most powerful weapons against belly fat gain and it is released surprise surprise when you SLEEP. If you are constantly lacking sleep you do not get this Growth hormone release which when normal can have a protective effect on your belly fat gain.
What’s more is that lack of sleep actually stimulates cortisol, our stress hormones. This extra stress hormone release can cause our body to want to store belly fat. It’s a lose lose. Increasingly people are losing sleep because of all of the screens they use. Using screens before bed can greatly impact the amount and restfulness of your sleep. It has become common place to forgo the book late at night and turn to reading an article, or eBook on your tablet. This may be preventing you from looking the way you want.
Reading / using your ipad, phone, or other devices late at night makes it harder to fall asleep what’s more is it greatly impacts how alert you are the next day. This comes from new research from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The findings said that this applied to anyone using eReaders, laptops, tablets, phones or TVs before bed. In short SHUT OFF YOUR SCREENS. If you must read before bed, than a printed book is your best option. Another option is to use some sort of blue light filter app, or device. If you are on Android you can download an APP that will filter the blue light which may make it easier to get to sleep, IOS users may need to buy a physical filter, and Computer users can download the program F.LUX. Programs and filters like these can filter out the blue light allow you to sleep more and more restfully which in turn increases growth hormone, decreases cortisol and helps you lose body fat.