SLEEP 101: What is Sleep Consistency?

SLEEP OVERVIEW 101

Sleep is arguably the most important factor in health and metabolism, besides nutrition. Its hormonal effects are super underrated and can not be supplemented by anything, not even the world’s most powerful drugs.

Most programs usually only focus on nutrition and exercise in a weight-loss and lifestyle-evolution process, but lack of sleep can mess up any well-planned weight-loss project.

Beyond fat loss or even hypertrophy goals, lack of sleep and poor sleep quality are some of the most important risk factors for many diseases like cardiovascular diseases, dementia, and cancers. A good example of this is night shift workers.

A meta-analysis done in 2018 found that the more night shifts a person works, the greater their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The risk of diabetes for night shift workers is up to 44% higher than for those who only work day shifts. 

The other thing that a motivated dieter doesn’t know is that just losing a couple of hours of sleep every night sabotages his/her weight loss process in a rather extreme way. In one study, it was found that while sleeping either 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours a night, both groups lost the same amount of weight. However, the 5.5-hour group lost 55% less fat and 60% more muscle mass than the 8.5-hour group.

This has an enormous effect on all recreational lifters’ physique goals. Losing muscle mass crushes metabolism in the long run, making it easier to rebound and gain the fat back.

With an estimated 25% of the adult population getting enough sleep, it’s no surprise, Western society leads the world in the rate of chronic diseases.

Biological circadian rhythm

Our need for sleep comes down to our biology as light-sensitive animals. The human brain and metabolism have developed a way to cope with daytime light and nighttime darkness over millions of years. This means we are meant to be active and search for food during the daytime and be inactive and without food during the dark hours.

Sleep is a very delicate and complex process, which can be affected by many factors that affect its circadian cycle, including:

• Meal timing
• Daily activities and their timing
• Exposure to blue light through technology at night
• Exposure to sunlight in the morning
• Medical drugs, alcohol, and other substances
• Chronic diseases
• Emotional & Mental stress

However, the most important thing that affects our sleep, disturbs our metabolism, and is fully within our control right now, is irregular sleeping patterns.

The main culprit here is you staying awake for too long after the sun goes down for no real reason. Worse yet — you extend the time frame in which you expose your eyes to blue light, through your devices. The brain only recognizes its nighttime by the ABSENCE of light.

Now, most of you recreational lifters reading this have to be somewhere at the same time every morning. But, on the weekends you stay awake even longer and sleep till the afternoon the next day to “catch up on sleep”. This is just the same as adding gasoline to the fire in hopes the liquid puts out the flame, but instead, you get an even bigger problem to deal with!

Without a regular sleep and wake cycle, our brains cannot set our body’s hormonal levels and autonomic nervous system. Without consistency, there will always be issues to be dealt with.

And these issues are a lot more than just feeling a little sluggish the next day. Chronic lack of sleep leads to:

• Appetite problems — often lack of hunger during the morning/daytime and unsatisfiable hunger in the evenings
• Loss of willpower, one feels unmotivated and gives in to temptations
• Emotional eating
• Problems with memory and learning things
• Slowed reaction time — like driving drunk
• Lowered physical performance
• Low testosterone levels
• Unstable mood, irritability

One doesn't need to be a doctor to see how big of an impact sleep has on our weight, performance & lifestyle.

The only thing we want you to understand is that WHEN you sleep/wake is just as important as how many hours of sleep you get. This is called sleep consistency and it is what sets your autonomic nervous system’s ability to optimize your hormones.

Your first goal in improving your sleep quality is to improve the consistency of when you go to sleep and wake up, and no, your body can not tell the difference between Monday and Saturdayso it’s best to keep that schedule 7 days a week.

Unless you’re under the age of 25 this has already made itself apparent to you, but the difference is today, we’re telling you why it happens.

After you improve your sleep consistency you’re ready to move on to improving your sleep quality with SLEEP 102: What is Sleep Quality?