Can lack of sleep affect your weight?

If you are struggling with obesity or a related issue, prioritizing your sleep can help you become a healthier individual.

Sleep plays an important role in weight management. 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night helps with hormone regulation. 

Sleeping too little increases levels of ghrelin and decreases levels of leptin. Ghrelin is a hormone that makes us feel hungry while leptin makes us feel full. This may cause us to feel hungrier and overeat.

Sleep impacts overall health, and people who have healthier sleep patterns manage health factors such as weight, blood pressure or risk for Type 2 diabetes more effectively.

Though sleep needs vary from person to person, most adults require between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night.

Sleep deprivation may increase your appetite and cause you to eat more calories. You are more likely to eat foods high in sugar and unhealthy fat.

People with excess weight need others to understand them

Having the right people around can help you stay on track with your weight loss plan but avoid depending on others to keep you motivated. 

It is good to have support but, with or without it, you are strong enough to reach your goals. 

Friends and family may not be the best people to look for encouragement and motivation for weigh loss. They might be surprised and resistant to seeing you change your ways.  

Try building a support network by joining an online community where you can connect with people who have similar goals. You will have ways to find new ideas, vent your frustration and meet people with similar or the same problems when losing weight. 

Whatever your situation, an online weight loss community is a great way to connect with people who understand your experience from a firsthand perspective and are willing to lend an ear. 

Recognize the importance of give and take. Express your appreciation for support and be ready to return the favor and help others achieve their wellness goals.

It is amazing how the Internet can connect strangers with little in common besides the goal of losing weight. Finding support for your weight-loss efforts can mean the difference between success and failure.

Health is like freedeom

Health is important to live life to the fullest. When a person leads a healthy lifestyle, the body remains healthy, and the mind is active and fresh. 

Living a healthy life would extend longevity and also regenerate the body and mind. Having good health is of core importance to human happiness.

Health, like freedom lasts as long as we exert ourselves to maintain it. 

You must make your choice! It is almost exclusively in your hands whether you enjoy a healthy, vigorous life or live out a half-life. You can decide to travel the average (unhealthy) road. No one will stop you and you will have lots of company.

You should care deeply about getting healthy and staying healthy. Dropping a few pounds can make a big difference. 

Looking at the big picture, the researchers say losing 10 percent of your body weight may be enough to do the trick. But even those who can’t lose that much weight can still benefit from smaller amounts of sustained weight loss.

While modest amounts of weight loss can improve your health, for certain conditions, greater weight loss may be associated with greater improvements.

Being obese or overweight makes you more likely to have conditions including:

• Heart disease and stroke
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Some cancers
• Gallbladder disease and gallstones
• Osteoarthritis
• Gout
• Breathing problems, such as sleep apnea (when a person stops breathing for short episodes during sleep) and asthma

Not everyone who is obese has these problems. The risk rises if you have a family history of one of those conditions.

Decide daily that you want to feel strong. It is up to you! If you need more motivation, you can explore further the weight-related complications that are associated with obesity.

Why do we regain weight so easily?

Some people can lose weight relatively quickly. However, as you may have personally found out the hard way, the story rarely ends there. 

Anyone who has tried to lose weight and keep it off knows how difficult the task can be. Regaining lost weight is a common occurrence for many people who lost weight and almost everyone who struggles with weight has been there.

Why do so many people regain weight after successful dieting? The simple answer is that people regain weight because they aren’t following the diet as strictly as they did in the beginning. Easier said than done, I know. 

Why is that? Why are people who lose weight faced with the fact that the odds are stacked against them for long-term success?

I read that after we lose weight, our body responds with a variety of mechanisms. When you lose a significant amount of weight, your metabolism actually slows down because of a mechanism known as "metabolic adaptation." Less energy is needed to “run” the smaller body.

Our hormones also change, which affects our appetite. Ghrelin levels (the “hungry hormone”) increases and the hormones that make you feel full and satiated after a meal decrease.

Persistent weight maintenance is so difficult to me, because when I eat food that does not support weight loss, I usually overeat. Consuming these foods makes it hard to control weight and I know that when I eat them for a day or two, I derail my weight loss/maintenance efforts.

Ultra-processed foods are designed to be irresistible, and to prompt overconsumption. Once we start eating them, it is very difficult to stop. We absorb them quickly and as a result, our bodies do not release the hormones that trigger fullness – and we keep eating. It is a vicious circle. This is my key eating “bad” behavior that leads to weight gain. 

What can we do to counter this? 

Here is what I need to focus on more and do that every single day.

• Maintain changes that have resulted in your weight loss.
• Be vigilant, watch your weight, keep a scale in your bathroom and use it once a day. 
• Take action when you have gained 5 pound or more. 
• Avoid empty calories (alcohol).
• Understand of the danger posed by ultra-processed food.
• Identify your triggers to overeat. Watching movies is my main trigger, but it could be anything like stress, fatigue, boredom, skipping meals.
• Get needed sleep and reduce stress in order to focus on healthy choices and avoid the weight gains associated with too little sleep and too much stress.

I believe we can break the cycle of weight loss and gain. 

Getting a handle on food during hard times

When life seems to be spinning out of control whether it is a difficult situation at work, troubled finances, a stressful marriage or relationship, you feel that you can no longer limit your food choices. Food is then your number one drug of choice. 

Ever been there? I have.

Whether we are at the beginning, in the middle, or having just reached our weight-loss goals, focusing on what you don’t eat will make us feel constantly deprived. And deprivation leads to frustration, desperation, and potentially failure. 

Instead, we have to focus on everything we are gaining through this process. It is always helpful to remind yourself that what we are giving up in the short term will help us get what we really want in the long run.

No matter what issue you are currently dealing with, remember that setbacks are not failures. They are a temporary interruption in our path. You can have a bad day, a bad week, month, or even year, but you can always start where you are and change your own ending. 

Weakness does not mean defeat. Mistakes are part of existence as no one is perfect. Mistakes help you learn and grow in life. They create the opportunity for new thinking. New and expanded points of view are generally a good thing.

While current reality can be challenging and disappointing, by taking a longer-term view, you can reassure yourself that current realities will shift, and good things will come—ultimately—from today’s experiences and lessons.

When life is hard, make sure that the foods you are reaching for aren’t only packaged snacks and be sure to include things like fruits and non-starchy vegetables in your snack choices.

Eat healthy during office hours

Considering that on average, we spend most of our waking hours at work, it only makes sense that the food choices we make at work can have a significant impact on our ability to lose weight.

Office environment with an endless list of corporate events that provide a readily available feast of sugary indulgence can easily sabotage even the most willful dieter. 

We can’t avoid the employer events that involve food. We just have to figure out the best approach to deal with temptations at those events. Make sure that you don’t show up hungry and focus on interacting with people, not eating. Show up with confidence knowing you have the tools and mindfulness needed to enjoy everything about the event.

Peers' attitudes and behavior are linked to success in weight loss. While peers' encouragement helps, dieting failures or negative attitudes among colleagues can discourage people from sticking to their own weight-loss plan.

Co-workers who try to tempt you even though they know you are dieting, or who try to make you feel silly or even guilty for trying to stay healthy, can be the biggest stumbling blocks to eating healthy at the office.

When it comes to the office, your co-workers are your peers, and you might even spend more time with them than anyone else. Ideally, just as in your regular life, you'll find co-workers with the same common goals of a healthy lifestyle. 

I am lucky to work in an office where the environment is generally healthy. My most important co-worker brings a salad to work every day and I am inspired by his healthy eating. However, many (if not most) office environments are not quite like mine.

No matter what your office environment is like, you can still take action to make sure your workdays are healthy and energizing, not enervating and fattening.

Craving sugar can be controlled

Many people struggle with sugar cravings. I am one of them.

Our modern lifestyle often includes processed foods, irregular sleep schedules, artificial light, and inactivity. These factors all contribute to sugar cravings, weight gain, and mood problems.

Yes, I am addicted to sugar. It became obvious after eating not a healthy food lunch last week. I felt hunger for something sweet after my lunch and I supplemented it with four bars of chocolate snack. That made me realize that sugar controls me.

I am writing this post to help me go back to eating food that supports weigh lose and overall health.

Craving sugar when I do not need to eat can be controlled.  I know I can override it. It will help me to physically and mentally feel better. I will be able to handle stress and overcome daily challenges more effectively. And I do not want to hunger for something sweet half an hour after my lunch or dinner every day. 

The answer lies in my choice of foods at main meals and generally resuming the eating style that helped me lose 91 pounds in the past. One of the pillars on my method was not allowing myself to become hungry. That is what I will focus on to help me move away from craving sugar.

Giving up sugar can feel unpleasant. Getting there will be tough and fighting off the cravings will be a constant battle.  

I don’t want my next blood test to show that I am close to pre-diabetic, or worse yet, already in that level. That fear will be my best motivator.