Not a lot has changed lately, but starting this blog has at least made me more cognizant of what I want to do. Every little bit counts. As they say, even a course change of 1° will add up to a complete turnaround, over time.
I've been talking with Maura about it, and she agrees that a real big key for us to accomplishing more and living better is to get enough sleep. A while ago, I saw an article about sleep and weight loss in Reader's Digest, and I skimmed it, but I now can't recall what exactly it was about. Then last weekend Maura gave me the article pages that she had torn out from a copy of Glamour magazine she'd recently purchased. The article was entitled, "You Can Do This! The Sleep Diet Is Here".
Eureka! I checked the site and found it here: http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2009/02/the-sleep-diet-is-here
Hmm...OK, actually, that isn't the whole article; there was about a page-long article before that, and then a couple of pages of pictures of the women involved. The link above just has a list of 4 things to do to get started on the "diet":
1. Establish a consistent sleep schedule; same bedtime, same wake-up time.
2. Establish a pre-bedtime routine, starting 45-60 minutes before retiring.
3. Refrain from caffeine after 2:30 PM (and no alcohol 3 hours before bedtime).
4. Experiment with how much sleep you need. Eventually, you should wake up naturally, without an alarm. Start with 7.5 hours, and see if that's enough. If not, go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night until you find your ideal time.
Here's the synopsis of the main article: a couple of sleep and medical experts, Michael Breus, Ph.D., and Steven Lamm, M.D., directed seven "Glamour readers of varying weights" with a simple 10-week plan/experiment—get at least 7½ hours of sleep per night. They were also encouraged to NOT change anything else.
At the end of 10 weeks, they'd lost an average of around 8½ pounds each. Not bad.
The science behind this involves the way the body generates the hormones the affect "appetite, cravings and the metabolism of fat". Here are the main headings:
1. Sleep more, eat less
A University of Chicago study demonstrated that women ate an average of 221 more calories on days when they'd slept 5½, versus days when got a full 8 hours.
Why? Less sleep equates to:
a) an increase in ghrelin, the appetite stimulation hormone, and
b) a drop in leptin, the satiety hormone. Leptin signals to the brain when you've eaten enough.
Also, the body craves simple carbs (usually sweets, bread/pasta, chocolate, etc.), which the body will easily turn into fat.
2. Sleep more, store less fat
Human growth hormone (HGH) is a 191-amino acid hormone produced by the pituitary gland. The brain secretes human growth hormone throughout the day, but much of that happens during sleep. From the Wikipedia "Growth hormone" page: "Nearly fifty percent of HGH secretion occurs during the third and fourth REM sleep stages."
I was a little confused about apparently ambiguous explanations about the role of HGH in regulating fat. Either it tells the body how to metabolize fat for fuel, or it breaks it down (or helps to break it down).
One way or the other, the bottom line is that lack of sleep means that the body metabolizes food less efficiently.
3. Sleep more, have more energy.
Yeah, this one's obvious, but the point was that the ladies that did this experiment had better workouts in the gym, and also didn't want to go sack out on the couch after getting home from work because they felt wiped out.
SO...I've been aware of my Diet Coke consumption in the afternoons. Today, I had one in the morning, and one with a Wendy's single w/cheese for lunch. I finished that by around 2:30, I think. I like to drink something carbonated, and that means Perrier for me if I want something to drink in the afternoons, besides water. However, they put in a Sparkletts-type water fountain in the break room, too, so I'll try that on a more regular basis.
I'm also working on the bedtime routine. The article's advice certainly doesn't require an engineering degree: figure out what time you need to get up, count back 7½ hours, and that's your bedtime. Right now, I need to be up by about 7:30 AM (although that will eventually move back to around 6 AM). Factoring in the bedtime routine means I should start prepping for bed at 11:15, at the latest. A 6:00 AM wake-up means a 10:30 PM bedtime, and wind-down starting at 9:30 or 9:45.
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