I’ve always been a night owl. For as long as I can remember, I would stay up very late at night and be exhausted the next day. When I was a kid, it would not have been unusual for me to sleep until 1pm or later on the weekends.
I am no longer afforded the luxury of sleeping in, but that hasn’t stopped me from still staying up too late. Way, WAY too late on most nights. I typically only get between 5 and 6 hours of sleep.
The result is that I feel like crap the next day. I’m too tired to think about exercising and eating right. It’s a real struggle to think about ANYTHING, let alone weight loss.
As it turns out, lack of sleep causes health problems. Serious health problems.
There was an article in Fitness magazine recently discussing the link between Type 2 Diabetes and sleep deprivation:
In fact, just three consecutive nights of inadequate sleep can elevate a person’s risk to a degree roughly equivalent to gaining 20 to 30 pounds, according to a 2007 study at the University of Chicago.
…previous research from Yale and the New England Research Institutes…showed that people who clock six hours or less of sleep a night are twice as likely to develop diabetes in their lifetime as those who snooze seven hours.
Chronic sleep deprivation can lead to an increased chance of:
- High blood pressure
- Heart attack
- Heart failure
- Stroke
- Obesity
- Psychiatric problems, including depression and other mood disorders
- Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
- Mental impairment
- Fetal and childhood growth retardation
- Injury from accidents
- Disruption of bed partner’s sleep quality
- Poor quality of life
So do you get enough sleep? Are you tired all the time? It may be time to put “get more sleep” on your goal’s list.
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