In the world of health, we place heavy focus on major variables like diet, exercise, supplements, and even activities for mental health like meditation.

And, while these are all big players when it comes to our overall health, one major variable is often left out:

Sleep.

Sleep is fundamental and critical not only for basic health, but also for any progress in your fitness or weight loss journey. In fact, if you feel you’re doing everything right but are still plateauing or feel off, you may want to look at your sleep.

Here we’ll dive into why sleep is so important, as well as how you can get the best night’s rest possible.

Encourages Fat Loss

Believe it or not, not getting quality sleep can actually interfere with fat loss. One study found that not getting enough sleep reduced the amount of fat participants lost by 55%, while another found that getting a good night’s rest reduced participants’ calorie consumption by 270 calories.

Pretty wild, right?

The reason sleep influences fat loss and calorie consumption may be due to a few factors. For one, not getting enough sleep is stressful one your body, which may keep your cortisol levels elevated. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone, and is also known to contribute to fat storage, especially around your belly.

Secondly, not getting enough sleep can also lead to a lack of energy. Your body may try to make up for this by getting more energy through food. This is possibly why getting enough sleep caused participants in the above study to eat less calories.

Keeps Hormones Balanced

The link between your hormones and your circadian rhythm, or sleep and wake cycle, are tightly linked. On one hand, fluctuations in your hormones can affect your sleep, while not getting enough sleep can also affect your hormones levels!

For instance, not getting enough sleep can cause cortisol (also known as the stress hormone) to rise. This is because lack of quality sleep is a type of stressor on your body.

If this is temporary, it isn’t that big of a deal. But, if cortisol is constantly high, it can begin to impact other hormones, such as insulin and leptin. Disruptions in these can then cause blood sugar issues, which can ultimately lead to weight can and other health issues.

Getting quality sleep helps your body rest and repair from the day, which can help normalize cortisol levels. This can help you avoid other hormones becoming unbalanced.

Stabilizes Mindset

We’ve all been there: when we’re running on a few hours of sleep, and small things become incredibly annoying. Our patience is zapped, and our motivation has left the building. The last thing we want to do when we haven’t been sleeping is work out, or worry about our diet.

As you can see, aside from simply zapping our energy, lack of sleep also affects our brain, mindset, and emotions. In fact, survey studies on patients with insomnia have found that lacking sleep can result in higher levels of psychological distress, such as anxiety and depression.

On the flip side, getting quality sleep is more likely to result in a content or positive mindset, as well as more physical and mental energy. This can mean the difference between having enough energy to go for our goals, and avoiding them due to fatigue.

The Best Tips To Get Quality Sleep

If you find yourself not sleeping well or feeling rested, there may be several reasons why. Below are some tips and tricks that address common (but not well-known) reasons our sleep can be interrupted.

Remove All Light Sources

As a society, we’ve become so accustomed to having lights on at all hours of the day that we typically don’t consider how it can affect our sleep.

In reality, even the smallest amount of light has been shown to affect our sleep cycles by disrupting our sleep hormones. This includes light from our phones, laptops, street lights, alarm clock lights, and night lights. In essence, any light in your room at night can potentially be keeping you from a deep sleep.

Why is this? Because the hormone melatonin, which is responsible for helping us get to sleep and stay asleep, is regulated by light. When it begins to get dark, our body starts releasing melatonin in order to help us fall asleep. However, when we are using our electronics in bed or have lights on before bedtime, we delay the production of melatonin. And, if we have lights on in our room at night, or light coming in from our windows, this melatonin production is being constantly disrupted, which keeps us from deep sleep.

For this reason, try to avoid using electronics at least one hour before bed. If you can’t do this, invest in “blue blocking” glasses that help filter out the light color spectrum that impacts melatonin the most.

Also be sure to use heavy blackout curtains if you have a lot of light coming in your windows.

Make Sure The Temperature Is Ideal

Like light, temperature can also disrupt your sleep. Specifically, being too hot seems to be the most common temperature that keeps people awake.

The reason for this is because our body temperature naturally dips during sleep, and rises in the morning to prepare us for waking up. When your body is simply overheated due to the outer temperature, it mimics this rise in temperature in the morning, which then keeps you awake at night.

To avoid this, I personally can’t recommend Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover more. This unique cover technology for your mattress dynamically cools and heats each side of your bed (perfect if you have a partner). It uses a Temperature Autopilot setting to adjust your sleeping temperature to your individual patterns, supporting your unique sleep cycle to maximize recovery and keep you comfortable throughout the night!

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Not to mention, the Pod Cover also monitors your sleep metrics, such as your heart rate, sleep stages, and respiratory rate, without having to wear any devices (which can be uncomfortable and end up waking you up).

Plus, The Pod is a mattress cover, so you can simply slide it on top of your current mattress! Because of this, it’s honestly been a dream (pun definitely intended). Sweating at night wasn’t uncommon for me and always disrupted my sleep before I started using The Pod. If that sounds like you too, remember that you can snag it here and get $250 OFF.

Try Herbs or Supplements

Sometimes, vitamin or mineral deficiencies can interfere with our sleep. One of the biggest culprits in this case is magnesium. Around 50-75% of the U.S. population is deficient in this essential mineral, which plays a huge role in sleep.

Magnesium helps regulate your nervous system, including your heart rate and stress hormones. Taking a magnesium supplement before bed may encourage relaxation and deeper sleep. Plus, as a bonus, it may also help ease sore muscles.

Other herbs known for helping with relaxation and sleep include:

• Lemon balm
• Chamomile
• Valerian root
• Passionflower

At the end of the day (can’t help myself with these puns), sleep is one of the most essential elements to not only performing and training well, but living a truly healthy life. Give some of these tips a try and note how improved sleep may be helping your gains, as well as your mindset.