360fit Sleep to Get Fit by Devin Sherrington

 How much do you sleep? That a question I never used to ask clients. I just assumed they slept.

A Few years ago I had a client who could not seem to lose weight. She was eat clean, exercising hard, and nothing was moving. I began to wonder if there was something wrong with her. Did she have a health issue we didn't know about?

Then she sent me an email one morning. And when I mean morning I mean at 2:30 am. When I got up and checked my email I saw the time she sent the email I couldn't believe it. What the heck was she doing out of bed at 2:30 am?

I posed the question to her the next time I saw her and the answer amazed me. She regularly didn't get more than four hours of sleep in a night.

Right then and there I knew what the issue was with her not losing weight. I told her she had to get at least seven hours of sleep per night, not in bed seven hours but sleeping seven hours. She started to sleep more and the weight fell off her!

You see we are a terribly sleep deprived country. We just don't sleep enough. We all know it's important but we don't get enough. The side effect of sleeping so little isn't just being tired, its stress on your body.

Your body needs sleep to recharge. If you don't get it it becomes more and more stressed. You might think you can handle it, but you can't escape biology. Your body will be stressed. And a stressed body doesn't lose weight, it holds onto it.

This is because your body knows how stressed it is. It wants to stay alive and with all the stress it knows it needs the extra calories fat has to have energy and keep going. So it will hold fat. You can be like my client and eat really well and exercise but it won't fix the problem. The stress will be there and you won't lose weight.

So do yourself and your body a favor. Get some sleep! You will be healthier and more fit because you did.

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Devin Sherrington is seven time Best Personal Fitness Trainer Halifax award winner, and owner the award winning fitness studio 360fit in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He lives in Fletchers Lake with his girlfriend Lauren and children Reign and Journey.