When a lot of people talk about weight loss, they talk about eating right, different diet options, building muscle and even how to eat, but rarely do people talk about the relationship between sleep and weight loss.

In trying to examine the many reasons why it looks like your weight loss is being slowed down or your results are not commensurate to the effort being put in, after examining your eating habits and your exercise, your sleep pattern may be the next offender.

Scientists have proven that we sleep in cycles of 75 to 90 minutes and to function properly, we need to have a minimum of four of such cycles which will lead to an average of about 6 hours and and a few minutes of sleep.

This means that to have optimal sleep, an adult needs to be sleeping for a total cumulative time of no less than sickness hours of sleep. How many of us can say we have a minimum of 6 hours of sleep?

Having 6 hours of of sleep means that you give your body time to rest, rebuild and repair itself. You give it time to reproduce the necessary hormones and secretions that allow you to function normally, you give it time to prepare for the next day and it’s attendant activities.

So in checking your workout routine, make sure you’re checking how many hours you are sleeping per night and how well rested that sleep is.

Sleep is an essential part of weight loss and can make or mar  your efforts.  Lack of sleep can cause tiredness which will prevent you from working out efficiently, lack of sleep reduces your metabolism, lack of sleep also leads to an over production of insulin which can be stored as fat in your body and lack of sleep depletes the production of leptin which helps to ensure getting a feeling of satisfaction from food, thereby making you less hungry and less likely to eat more food.

Most of the world famous athlethes are on a strict feeding, workout and sleep regime.

It’s little wonder that their bodies do all that they want it to do and bounces back even after extreme training sessions. Little wonder that they have the energy to run around in a field or in a court and some of us can’t even run after our toddler without being breathless.

I know that for the modern woman, juggling a family, a career, school and business is almost work overload but it’s imperative that we find time to rest and repair our bodies for optimum performance.

It may mean cutting back on social media time, it may mean saying no to some Hangouts, watching one instead of two series, meal prepping for an entire week to save time or any other thing that will help us save more time in our day.

I mean an added benefit asides the health and fitness benefits of sleep will be your general emotional well being. Honestly, on the nights you sleep for 6 hours or more, you find that you’re less cranky and less irritable.

Sleep is imperative for the proper functioning and performance of our bodies and is essential to good health, weight loss and emotional well being.

As such, it’s importance cannot be over emphasized. We need sleep, our bodies need sleep, our weight loss efforts needs sleep and our families need us to have we’ll rested sleep so that we can perform optimally.

Asides just sleeping, it’s important to sleep well!!! So that means trying to shower before bed, getting comfortable, putting off the phone and putting it away and just allowing our bodies to enjoy peace and quiet before going off to dream land.

So ladies, there you have it, are you sleeping enough? Are you sleeping well?

It’s not going to be easy but please share with me what steps you plan to take in the coming weeks to ensure you’re sleeping well.