How to Lose Weight While You Sleep
Who does not dream of it: lose weight while you sleep and wake up slim.
It doesn’t happen quite that fast — but specific sleep rules actually help promote weight loss.
So slimming in your sleep is possible.
However, slim while you sleep does not mean that you lose weight without any action on your part. Because here, too, you have to be active and break your own habits.
Today, sleep requirements are determined individually for different age and activity groups. In 2015, for example, the US National Sleep Foundation issued precise sleep recommendations for different age groups:
Newborns should sleep 14–17 hours.
Adolescents should sleep 8–10 hours.
Adults between 26 and 64 years of age should best sleep 7–9 hours.
Seniors over 65 years of age should sleep 7–8 hours.
Thus, the absolute minimum sleep for adults is 6 hours per night and seniors 5–6 hours.
The limit to sleep deprivation for most adults is, therefore, nightly sleep duration of 6 hours — anything less than that is too little and leads to permanent health impairments.
However, since daily activity also plays a role, the limit to sleep deprivation for very active people could already be reached at less than 7 hours of sleep per night. Of course, the duration and intensity of the deep sleep phases that are so particularly important for recovery and regeneration are also decisive.
The most powerful fat-burning substance in the human body, according to medical experts, growth hormone (or somatotropic hormone STH), that produced primarily in the first hours of deep sleep and in the morning hours shortly before waking up. The release of STH is subject to external influences.
First and foremost would be night sleep.
Regular, undelayed, and uninterrupted night sleep is one of the basic requirements for STH release by the pituitary gland:
Lack of sleep and going to bed late, on the other hand, can significantly reduce the release of this essential natural fat burner.
The result is reduced not only nocturnal fat burning but also delayed repair of human structures damaged in everyday life, such as muscles and connective tissue, since STH would increase the transport of amino acids needed to build muscle.
Another crucial fat-burning hormone that is also ensured by adequate sleep is testosterone. It is known that lack of sleep can massively impair and lower testosterone levels:
Testosterone is responsible for muscle building and fat loss.
Lack of sleep can negatively influence fat metabolism by suppressing the two essential hormones for fat burning — namely growth hormone and testosterone — leading to obesity in the long term.
It’s not a secret that bad sleeping habits can prevent weight loss. Fat metabolism is negatively affected, and the feeling of satiety is long in coming.
These three rules below will help you boost your fat burning at night and lose weight while you sleep.
1. The right dinner
To produce as much fat-burning growth hormone as possible at night, we should pay attention to our dinner.
Reduce the consumption of carbohydrates and fats in the evening.
These inhibit the release of growth hormone, such as does alcohol, which reduces STH by up to 70 to 75%:
On the other hand, if we eat protein-rich foods, STH formation can be promoted since it is, after all, made up of 200 amino acids. In particular, growth hormone is stimulated by the amino acid arginine.
Good plant sources of protein containing arginine are pumpkin seeds, peanuts, almonds, pine nuts, lentils, and hazelnuts.
The protein powder should best be taken on an empty stomach (in the form of an evening protein shake), as the amino acids are then hardly accompanied by fats, carbohydrates, and fiber and can better develop their effect.
For the formation of the natural fat burner, sufficient vitamin B6 is also required — a deficiency can inhibit the STH release by 50%.
Here, it’s recommended to take a good vitamin B supplement or multivitamin daily, which provides at least the recommended daily dose of 1.6 mg of vitamin B6 per day.
Natural vegan sources of vitamin B6 include walnut kernels, sesame seeds, chickpea, and peanuts.
2. The right duration of sleep
As a basic rule for sleep duration, you can consider the recommendations given above, 7–9 hours are optimal for an adult.
However, even more important than the theoretical scientific recommendations is your own subjective recovery feeling. In any case, sleep as long as you feel refreshed and able to perform every day!
And be sure to fall asleep before midnight.
3. The right climate in the bedroom
Fat burning needs 10% more oxygen than carbohydrate burning:
Therefore, sleep with the window open; at least a crack should be left open in the bedroom to let in enough fresh air.
Especially in small bedrooms where ventilation is infrequent, and several people breathe simultaneously, the air’s oxygen content sometimes drops considerably. In contrast, the carbon dioxide content rises due to exhalation, which inhibits fat burning.
It’s also recommended not to heat in the bedroom but rather to sleep cool so that the body can release heat energy and build fat-burning brown adipose tissue.
With attention to these sleep good habits, and a commitment to making sleep a priority every day, we can leverage sleep to help lose weight and stay at a healthy weight as we age.
The body continues to burn calories when we’re sleeping because it needs the energy to keep the brain, heart, lungs, and all other vital systems working.
Basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the term used to define the number of calories required to maintain internal physiological functions while we sleep.
Our body takes oxygen to oxidize nutrients (primarily glucose and fatty acids).
This process gives an energy surplus that the body can use to support its functions, even when asleep.
Chemical Equation (Reactants > Products):
Sugar + Oxygen > Carbon Dioxide + Water + Usable Energy
We exhale carbon dioxide, like the oxygen molecule but with one carbon atom inserted in between. Guess where did that carbon atom come from?
Right, from glucose and fatty acids.
That’s all a loss of weight comes to — a loss of water and carbon dioxide.
Getting plenty of high-quality rest is an important — and still overlooked– factor in weight control. Therefore, not getting “enough” sleep will tend to compromise the fat-burning process and cause the body to retain more fat.
Thank you for reading!
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Disclaimer: The article isn’t medical advice. The author is not a medical doctor. The information is for educational purposes only. It is not meant to diagnose or treat any medical conditions.
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