Does a person lose weight in a dream - how fat is burned at night

Everyone knows that losing weight requires a huge amount of effort to achieve at least some result. This requires following a strict diet, enduring dietary restrictions and grueling physical activity. But surely there must be an easier way to lose weight that does not require such sacrifices. And it exists, even more than that – it is so simple that many people don’t even know about it. We are talking about losing weight in your sleep. The question immediately arises: how to lose weight in your sleep, is it even possible? It's actually a lot simpler than it seems, but for this method to work, you need to follow a few key rules.

Predisposing factors for losing weight while sleeping

Content

While we are trying to find ways to lose everything, our body comes up with everything for us. The work of internal organs does not stop for a second, even during sleep. At this time, our body is in a state of active self-cleansing, which has a beneficial effect on weight loss during sleep. In addition to the fact that the body breaks down fat to accumulate enough energy to cleanse and renew cells, it also produces hormones that help with this.

At the same time, such processes take place only during healthy, full sleep. An incorrect regimen, oversleeping and lack of sleep, lack of rest - all this leads to significant disruptions in the functioning of the body, which can lead to weight gain. This is due to an imbalance of hormones. The body has to produce hormones that stimulate hunger in order to provide itself with enough energy in conditions of lack of rest. After all, energy is constantly wasted, but it is not replenished as quickly as we would like.

This also includes proper nutrition and diet. Everything we eat before bed is digested by the body only when we sleep. When we eat something heavy that disrupts the natural balance of the body, we will get two problems at once: problems with sleep and problems with digestion. Therefore, it is very important to carefully monitor your evening diet.

Sleep and excess weight. Obesity with apnea

The fastest way to them, namely the appearance of excess weight, is obstructive sleep apnea syndrome . Its many consequences include:

– Impaired night breathing, leading to oxygen starvation of tissues and a decrease in metabolic rate.

– Disorder in the production of insulin and other hormones that regulate carbohydrate metabolism. This causes impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes, which predisposes to the accumulation of fat “ballast”.

– Inhibition of the release of somatotropin (growth hormone), which slows down the consumption of fat by the body and causes obesity during apnea.

– Depression, which kills the motivation in a sick person to take care of himself.

Moreover, a vicious circle is observed. Obesity leads to the development of sleep apnea, and sleep apnea contributes to the progression of obesity.

You can learn more about the connection between sleep apnea and obesity in this lecture on the symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea:

To improve the prognosis of the disease and avoid its dangerous complications (just look at the 3-5 times increased risk of stroke and heart attack!), it is very important for patients with sleep apnea to lose weight. This is extremely unfair, but it is much harder for them to do this than for anyone else: the notorious “vicious circle” that connects sleep and weight and which is extremely difficult to break is hampered.

What advice can you give to such people?

Dr. FrankieRoman from the Center for Sleep Disorders (USA, Ohio) makes the following recommendations.

Use

Using CPAP therapy
. It not only helps you breathe and reduces the risk of complications, but also promotes weight loss. Sleep is normalized, and this improves the function of the endocrine system and restores impaired hormone production. For overweight patients who start using CPAP, some weight loss often occurs spontaneously, without any effort on their part.
Correcting eating habits, maintaining a healthy diet.
Physical activity taking into account human capabilities. For patients who find it difficult to move actively due to age, joint problems or excess weight, water aerobics is recommended.
Losing weight with like-minded people. If a person feels supported, it will be much easier for him to fight kilograms. This support may be available from family or a local weight loss group.

Interestingly, losing weight helps not only slow down the development of all pathological conditions associated with sleep apnea, but also even reduce the severity of the syndrome itself. This occurs by reducing the compression of the walls of the pharynx by the fatty “muff”.

How to lose weight while sleeping

So, in order to launch all the processes necessary for the body to function properly during rest, you need to follow several rules. They address several aspects of proper rest at once to guarantee maximum efficiency:

Sleep at night. Not all sleep times are created equal. Only at night, between ten and twelve o'clock in the evening, does the body receive complete rest. Morning sleep is already less useful, and daytime sleep practically does not allow the body to rest.
Follow the routine. You'll be surprised how refreshed you'll feel if you start going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. This is due to setting a work schedule for your body, which will have a beneficial effect on the quality of rest, which will only contribute to weight loss.

Turn off the lights. Complete darkness in the room is very important for proper rest. The sleep hormone begins to be produced only in such conditions, and its deficiency will lead to low quality sleep.
Don't eat at night. Evening snacks unnecessarily burden the digestive system, which already works even at night.
Put your phone down. It is also advisable not to watch TV or use a computer or laptop. In addition to the fact that the light from the screen irritates our eyes, gadgets also lead to unnecessary emotional and mental stress.

Thus, to ensure guaranteed fat burning at night, you first need to ensure sleep itself. The more and better you sleep, the better rest you will have, but remember that you shouldn’t oversleep either - this can be fraught with headaches and hormonal imbalances.

How sleep affects weight: insomnia and lack of sleep

Decreasing sleep duration, either consciously or due to insomnia , also contributes to weight gain. There are two main reasons for this.

Vo-p

First of all, if a person does not sleep at the appropriate time, it is almost guaranteed that he will have a thoughtful question: “Should I chew something?” This will be followed by thoughtfully focused study, and then consumption of the contents of the refrigerator. It was found that people with short sleep duration not only finish eating later than everyone else, but also start earlier. What kind of results can you expect with such habits?

Secondly, a decrease in sleep duration disrupts the production of special substances called orexins, which are secreted by cells in certain parts of the brain. Normally, they are responsible for metabolism and appetite, and suppression of their production, which occurs with insomnia and sleep deprivation, contributes to the appearance of excess weight. At the same time, the formation of leptin, a hormone in adipose tissue that causes hunger, increases. The results of such hormonal imbalance soon begin to be reflected in body parameters and the degree of satisfaction of a person with his appearance. Another demonstration of the connection between sleep and excess weight...

One study shows that people with an average sleep requirement who sleep 7 hours a night have optimal metabolic processes and do not predispose them to weight gain, while sleeping six and five hours a day causes weight gain. At the same time, a sleep duration of more than 8-9 hours contributes to the appearance of obesity in the same people, which somewhat contradicts the rule “sleep, don’t eat, lose weight.” The latter can be explained by the presence of sleep disorders in patients, for example, the aforementioned apnea syndrome, in which obesity is almost guaranteed to occur. In such cases, patients with a normal need for sleep can stay in bed for 9-10 hours or more, but their sleep due to respiratory arrests becomes intermittent, unrefreshing, and creates a feeling of “lack of sleep.” Other changes characteristic of the disease also develop, including weight gain.

It has been noted that men are more prone to obesity due to lack of rest than women, but only with short-term insomnia or sleep deprivation. Prolonged lack of sleep evens out the risks.

People who sleep little can only be given one piece of advice: if sleep restriction occurs deliberately, it should be stopped if possible, and if insomnia is to blame, it should be treated seriously. In the latter case, you need to pay special attention to sleep hygiene, and especially to playing sports, which both improve sleep and help fight weight. By the way, it recently became known that not only classic aerobic exercise, such as swimming, jogging or cycling, but also weight lifting is useful for improving sleep...

What to eat before bed

Although it is rightly believed that eating before bed is not recommended, fasting is also not an option. For normal functioning of the body, you must have dinner. But here you need to follow your own rules:

You should have dinner no later than three hours before bedtime. This will give the body time to digest most of the food and thereby relieve some of the load.
Under no circumstances should you overeat. This also leads to unnecessary stress on the gastrointestinal tract. And reducing the amount of food consumed will direct the body to break down the fats already present in the body.
You should eat only light, light foods that do not burden your body in the evening. To do this, you need to monitor the calorie content of foods and their content of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.

Although there are no specific guidelines for eating before bed, there are foods that are better digestible. The following have a beneficial effect on weight loss:

Fermented milk products - cottage cheese, yogurt, ayran, yogurt and others. It is advisable to take products with low fat content, but not low-fat.
Chicken and quail eggs.
Lean white meat - chicken, rabbit.
White fish and seafood.
Vegetables – carrots, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, lettuce.
Fruits - pears, apples, oranges.
Berries - cherries, blueberries, currants, raspberries.

Influence

Impaired sleep balance leads to a change in metabolism for the worse. The consequence of this disorder is most often obesity and extra pounds.

Chronic lack of sleep leads to decreased or complete absence of energy. It causes loss of strength, lethargy, and lowers the level of hemoglobin in the blood.

Disruption of sleep patterns negatively affects a person’s mental activity and concentration. This causes visual and auditory hallucinations.

Sleep should last at least 8, but no more than 10 hours. Compliance with the regime will prevent the formation and development of diseases. Therefore, the relationship between sleep and weight is undeniable.

What to drink before bed

In addition to eating right, you need to know what to drink to lose weight while you sleep. There are no complex or strict rules here either, only general recommendations that will positively affect your well-being and help you lose weight. Before going to bed you should drink the following drinks:

Blueberry tea. It helps reduce blood sugar levels.
Oolong tea. Oolong has many beneficial properties; it has a beneficial effect on the general condition of the body.
Warm milk. It will help you relax and sleep better
Freshly squeezed vegetable juices.
Green tea. Just like vegetable juices, green tea helps speed up your metabolism.
Anise infusion. This infusion will help you relax

You can also drink kefir before bed. In addition to the fact that this drink is useful in itself, it quenches not only thirst, but also hunger. It is not recommended to drink coffee or other drinks containing caffeine. They will give you a charge of completely unnecessary energy and disrupt the normal state of the body.

Other examples of how sleep affects weight

Etc

borrowing from the list of sleep disorders that lead to obesity, we note one more condition: narcolepsy . An imbalance in the orexin/hypocretin system causes patients to become more likely to gain weight, even though their appetite is generally reduced. Other diseases and conditions accompanied by increased sleepiness usually, on the contrary, lead to weight loss: when a person sleeps all the time or wants to sleep, that is, he simply has no time. Or I don't want to.

Unfortunately, symptomatic treatment of patients with narcolepsy does not lead to correction of their weight, because hormonal disorders do not disappear under the influence of taking psychostimulants. Such people can only rely on their own strength to lose weight. That’s how sad it is: usually people are associated with lack of sleep and obesity, but with narcolepsy it’s the opposite.

In addition to the listed disorders, there is night eating syndrome , a disease based on disturbances in circadian rhythms. It is accompanied by changes in metabolism and causes insomnia, severe night hunger, leading to obesity, reluctance to consume food in the first half of the day, even to the point of disgust, and a strong feeling of guilt for one’s “incontinence.” This illness is considered mental and is treated mainly with psychotherapy. Biorhythm correction products based on the artificial sleep hormone melatonin are also used.

And finally, the last thing. of sleepwalking occurs , in which people eat at night, in their sleep, and do not remember it the next morning (by the way, this was very vividly shown in Rebecca Miller’s film “The Private Life of Pippa Lee”). Needless to say, large meals at night are not good for health and figure, so in case of such a violation, it is worth limiting the “sleepwalker’s” access to the kitchen.

Let's summarize. Sleep affects weight, and rather one-sidedly: when it is disturbed, in most cases fat accumulation occurs. Therefore, in order to feel and look good, it is important to improve your sleep and solve all the problems associated with it. Against this background, the struggle for harmony will become much more successful and productive, and soon the need for it will disappear altogether.