Where are the results going?

There are two MAJOR reasons why people are failing to hit their fitness and body composition goals and they are both down the weekend and everything that goes with it. One is sleep deprivation and the other is drinking excess calories undoing all your good work mid-week. Sleep deprivation. I’m always on alert for new sleep studies. I find that sleep is a major roadblock in nutrition and fitness and something people just don’t take seriously.  Sleep can change hunger levels, but it can also put us at risk for metabolic, immune, digestive, and memory issues among others. In a report that just came out, researchers measured potential sleep debt in young men. The researchers found that it takes around 4 days of sleeping-in to bring you back to normalized levels after even 1 hour of sleep debt (or not sleeping to optimal level). It was a decent study because they also tracked blood markers. After catching up on sleep, cortisol was slightly lowered, glucose metabolism slightly improved, and thyroid function was slightly better. Small improvements but it was a short duration study using only young males. It gives hope for future studies. So, one night of sleep debt can leave you lagging for the remainder of the week, effecting appetite, mood and open you up to illness etc. Drinking calories Ok I just want to establish a baseline here. One large cappuccino with sugar and whole milk can weigh up to 200 cal’s a pop and a glass of wine can cost you upto nearly 200 cals a pop. Now I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to have two cappuccinos and a bottle of wine of the course of a weekend, however, this can cost you upward of 1000+ calories.  Combine this with a slightly more relaxed approach to your diet and you are best case scenario balancing out the good work you did mid-week and the worst case is that you go into a calorie surplus and gain weight. Combine this with sleep deprivation it’s a never-ending spiral.  

1. Kitamura, Shingo, Yasuko Katayose, Kyoko Nakazaki, Yuki Motomura, Kentaro Oba, Ruri Katsunuma, Yuri Terasawa, Minori Enomoto, Yoshiya Moriguchi, Akiko Hida, and Kazuo Mishima. “Estimating Individual Optimal Sleep Duration and Potential Sleep Debt.” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 35812. Accessed October 27, 2016. doi:10.1038/srep35812.