Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts

Exercise Your Way to a Good Night's Sleep

Let's face it, most of us don't get up and run a marathon every morning. The good news is we do not really need to. Even doing the minimum recommended amount of exercise a few times a week will improve your quality of sleep over time, not to mention your health.

Not everyone is the go to the gym and pump some iron type, so it is a good thing there are so many ways to exercise in the comfort of your own home. One of them, my personal favorite, is the exercise video. These are good because there is a video out there for almost any personality type. There are videos for dancing, pilates, yoga, cardio and even stripping.

So if taking up a new skill sounds like fun, run down to your local Wal-Mart and pick something up. A more expensive but more gym-like option is an at home weight machine. Most of these can adjust to fit many of your exercise needs.

Why start an at home fitness routine now? For people who have trouble sleeping, exercise often doesn't sound like the most tantalizing thing. But you have to weigh your reluctance against the benefits. Once the exercise routine begins to take effect, not only will you be healthier and more in shape, your sleeping problems could be solved as well.

To achieve this however, you have to be careful about when you exercise. Working out too close to bedtime can make it harder to fall asleep, because the endorphins are still taking affect. Make sure you exercise at least five or six hours before bedtime. This is also beneficial because a drop in body temperature can aid you in falling asleep.

For this routine to be effective, raise your heart rate twenty to thirty minutes a day about five days a week. If you are a busy person, breaking this up into ten minute sections can be just as effective. Outside of that twenty or thirty minutes though, remember to always stretch before and after exercising. Not doing so can lead to injury and after workout stiffness.

Do not worry if you are sore for the first week or two, it just means it is working. Soreness is simply a buildup of lactic acid in the muscles. More stretching and lots of water will get rid of it, and in the meantime, aspirin will do the trick.

Hopefully you can find time in your schedule to exercise, and you will discover the wonders it can work on your quality of sleep.

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5 Reasons Sleep Affects Your Fitness

It seems these days, getting less than six hours of sleep is considered a characteristic of an ambitious, successful person. It's seen as a badge of honour. Where as people that catch 7-8 hours of sleep are seen as lazy and unproductive.

Well that's certainly untrue!

Here's a Quick story

A few months back I was working until the evening. Then in again very early in the morning. It took me hours to unwind and I ended up in bed much too late. I had to be up at 4am. So I accumulated a lot of lost Z's! I noticed the usual signs of sleep deprivation. Being easily stressed, unfocused and lacking energy as a few examples. What I never expected was actually the first thing I noticed. I was ALWAYS hungry. I could not control my appetite! I put on a few pounds rather quickly as a result.

Curious, I had to look in to this. I really wanted to figure out why this was happening to me. After researching and discovering the answers to my question, I knew I had to change my routine. Especially if I ever wanted to succeed with my fitness goals!

FIVE Reasons Why Losing Sleep Will Ruin Your Fitness Goals:

1. Sleep loss affects the hormone cortisol. It causes you to still feel hungry even though you have eaten an adequate amount of food.

2. Sleep deprivation interferes with carbohydrate metabolism, causing high blood glucose levels. Excess glucose means an overproduction of insulin, which equals an extra storage of body fat. Eventually this can lead to insulin resistance which can contribute to diabetes.

3. When you are in a deep sleep, growth hormones are at work. A lack of quality sleep will reduce the amounts of growth hormones, which are proteins set out to regulate the proportions of fat and muscle in your bod. This is the time your work in the weight room materializes. If you want muscle, you need a good night sleep!

4. The hormones leptin and ghrelin are also a big factor in weight loss and sleep patterns. Ghrelin tells you that you are hungry. Leptin lets you know when you are full. When you don't get enough sleep ghrelin rises while leptin levels fall. You wind up always feeling hungry. That is exactly what I experienced myself.

5. Symptoms of sleep loss such as stress and a lack of energy definitely affect your fitness plans. If you are not in the mood to work out and are too tired to anyway, then you will lose hard earned workouts and lose progress pretty quickly.

Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep every night. If you have trouble sleeping or you wake up a lot during the night, see a doctor. You may have insomnia or another type of sleep disorder.

Only getting a few hours of sleep each night won't prove you are the busiest person in the world. The only thing it will prove is how well you can sport the dark circles under your eyes!

Goodnight!

Kaleena Lawless
Personal Training Specialist
http://www.kalisthenixfitnessblog.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kaleena_A_Lawless