Part 2: Zzzzzzz......

If you take anything out of these blogs, remember this: it is what you do outside of the gym that will ultimately benefit you the greatest inside the gym. Three of the most overlooked and ironically most important aspects of optimal health, vitality and disease prevention are sleep, water and food. While I have previously talked about food in my Metabolic Typing article, the focus of this article will be on sleep.

For starters, lets remember that any gains (or losses) that we see as a result of doing cardio and working with weights happens when we are at rest, and not when we are actually partaking in the activity. Essentially, we are breaking our bodies down during exercise and it is during our period of rest that our bodies are recuperating. The paramount importance of nutrition has already been mentioned in a previous article, so we turn our attention to sleep.

As reported by Dr. T.S. Wiley and Dr. Bent Formby, believe it or not, we are often sick, diabetic and suffering from heart disease and cancer due to a lack of sleep. "Mammals are hard wired to store fat, become insulin resistant and get high cholesterol during the long days of summer and then to sleep (hibernate) or at least starve for a while, become insulin sensitive again and drop cholesterol levels when the days are shorter (winter)...Electricity and the light bulb brought endless light, which the body interprets as endless summer. Now, we don't sleep (hibernate) and we don't starve (for carbohydrates). We are fat and getting fatter."

Literally, the later we stay up at night, the more our brains force us to seek energy for storage by eating sugar (carbohydrates). In addition, Wiley and Formby report that this leads to "light toxicity" which is a direct cause of excessive paranoid, aggressive, hysterical and urgent behaviour also known as stress (anyone see Al Pacino in "Insomnia"?) In this state, blood sugar is elevated, taxing the insulin response, increasing cortisol levels in your blood stream which has powerful blood sugar mobilizing effects. In other words, stressing yourself out too much, whether it be work, personal life or a lack of sleep will actually lead to exercise making you fatter and keeping you fat!

In order to combat this stress, you need to take advantage of your rest time. I've had many clients who have not been able to maximize their own sleep time, but with the help of these few tips, many of them have now reduced their total body fat, dropped weight and are on their way to happy and healthy lives. Try these tips:

• Your sleeping environment has a great impact on your ability to fall asleep and to stay asleep. It's not easy for many people to fall asleep because we are surrounded by more lights and more noise than in times past. While it is almost impossible to fall asleep in a perfectly quiet and perfectly dark environment, it is important to try to achieve as close to this ideal situation as possible.
• Sound - noise - also affects your ability to fall and stay asleep, because even though you may fall asleep, your brain can still process sound while you are sleeping, possibly waking you up in the middle of the night in your deepest and most anabolic sleep stage. Therefore, do your best to eliminate light and noise from your immediate sleep environment. Doing so will help you fall asleep faster, and stay asleep until morning.
• Establish a regular sleeping pattern by going to bed at the same time.
• Reduce your physical activity two hours prior to sleeping.
• Avoid alcohol and/or coffee for several hours before going to bed.
• Skip large meals before bed.

Try this for a week. Stay zealous about it. See how you feel.

Check back in a few days where I will complete this three part series by focusing on the importance of water.