While individuals might not burn much fat through sleep alone, sleep is essential to losing weight. Most people do not burn a ton of fat while they are asleep, but sleep is a critical component for wellbeing, and not getting enough can hinder weight loss efforts.
While it might sound kind of goofy to promote the idea of burning fat while sleeping, you will be surprised to learn that your body is in constant calorie-burning mode, even while you are fast asleep. When your body goes into REM sleep, it starts burning more calories (and if you are already at a caloric deficit, it starts burning fat).
Last, making your weight workouts is incredibly efficient for burning fat and calories when you are at rest, sitting down after a workout, or burning fat when you are asleep. Since weight training is so important to building muscle and burning fat, squeeze in some weights during workouts whenever possible, it is a smart way to increase calorie-burning potential throughout the day (yes, even when you are sleeping).
The more mass you have in your body, the more calories you will burn when resting, sleeping, and doing other activities. Helping means, in essence, the more muscles you have, the more calories your body will burn. On a more serious note, if you are sleeping for 8+ hours every night, you are burning more fat, while sleeping fewer hours, your body will begin to target your muscles rather than your fat. While more awake time can lead to burning more calories, limiting calories when sleep-deprived leads the body to burn lean mass instead of fat.
To increase the amount of calories burned during sleep, you will have to boost your basal metabolic rate. On average, most people burn around 15% less calories during sleep than they do at their daily basal metabolic rate. Each person burns different amounts of calories during sleep, depending on his or her individual basal metabolic rate (BMR). The precise amount of calories burned while asleep depends on the complicated interactions of sleep, diet, exercise, and other variables.
How much calories you burn has everything to do with a variety of factors, including your weight, your metabolism, and how much sleep you get every night. As a very rough number, we burn about 50 calories per hour when we are asleep. On average, an individual burns about 0.5 calories per pound of their bodyweight per hour they sleep.
A person weighing 185 pounds could burn about 56 calories, or 392 to 504 calories, over the course of an entire nights sleep. That means an individual weighing 160 pounds would burn 580 calories sleeping 8 hours. Multiply this with the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep experts say you should be getting every night, and it is a total snoozing potential of between 266 to 342 calories. A recent study found that if you miss a whole nights worth of sleep, you could actually burn 135 more calories during that time.
Getting adequate sleep each night is crucial to losing weight and fat from your midsection. Focusing on healthy eating and a regular exercise routine are crucial, but there are also strategic changes that can be made to optimize sleep for fat burning. Here are a few ways you can leverage your sleeping routine and rest during the night to help your body burn more calories and maintain metabolic health. With an eye on these sleep habits, as well as a commitment to making sleep a priority each and every day, you really can leverage sleep to help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight as you age.
By going to bed early, you ensure your body has plenty of time to get a good nights rest, and get in sync with your bodys circadian rhythm — two things that have been linked to weight loss, according to studies. Fasting at night – that is, closing your kitchen early – can help you lose more weight, according to research in the Cell Metabolism Journal, even when you are eating more throughout the day.
If you are already doing the hard work of practicing strict eating habits and staying consistent with workouts, it makes sense to make a needed adjustment that helps you burn fat when you are asleep. Being able to get good sleep of 7-8 hours per night will have a substantial impact on your bodys ability to burn fat while you are asleep.
Getting regular amounts of good sleep, sticking to a consistent sleep-wake cycle, and protecting daily circadian biorhythms from being disrupted are all ways you can encourage your bodys natural melatonin production, which can help your body build more brown fat and more beige fat. Regular exercise and healthy eating may help you get a consistent sleep schedule, improve muscle-to-fat ratio, and increase your metabolism.
National Institutes of Health studies show turning down your thermostat to 66 degrees Fahrenheit cold cuts your calories by as much as 7 percent, because your body uses up fat to keep your core temperature. Recent studies show that temperature changes how the body burns fat, particularly when you are asleep. Colder temperatures make it easier for you to get into deeper sleep, where the body does all of its metabolic functions, helping you burn fat and calories in a dream. Basically, cooler temperatures seem to produce more brown fat in the course of your sleep, which, in turn, means your metabolism burns more calories than normal through that brown fat.
Studies have shown that sleeping overnight in cool environments increases brown and beige fat, triggering your body to turn white fat into these energy-burning fats. According to a small study published in the Diabetes Journal, people who kept their bedrooms 66 degrees consistently for one month increased the amount of brown fat burning calories in their bodies by as much as 42%, and increased metabolism by 10%. A recent study published in The Endocrine Societys journal Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that sleeping at cooler temperatures can help you burn up to 15% more calories while you are at rest via brown fat.
If you are targeting a specific amount of protein in your diet during the day, make sure you are considering adding it in to ensure that you are hitting your nutrition goals, as well as stimulating the bodys fat-burning state during your sleep.
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