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.

360fit - My 4 Questions for Fitness Goals

A part of goal setting is to accomplish your goal; but a more important piece of goal setting is to understand your goal. When you finally know why something is important to you, you begin to make better decisions. In the course of the week we make hundreds of decisions that affect our health and fitness. Understand your goal, understand your decisions, and start enjoying your journey to becoming fit.

The other day I woke up and realized that I had a few questions about my goals. I realized that without knowing the answers to these questions that I would never completely enjoy the process of becoming fit. I asked myself:

Why does PERFORMANCE matter to me?

•  It measures success. It determines how fit I am.

Why do I want to be fit?

• To me fitness represents health and success.

What am I willing to sacrifice to get fit?

• Meat (I am trying a vegan diet)

What is my reward for my dedication?

• Confidence

…Do you know how you are motivated? Do you understand WHY you do what you do?

- Ben Constigan
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360fit - 10 Commandments of Performance

1. Eat- You are what you eat. Eat for performance and you will look and feel like an athlete.
2. Heavy- Pick up heavy things. Performance increases with absolute strength.
3. Fast- Increased intensity, shortened time intervals, increased speeds, builds lean powerful athletes.
4. Long- Moderate intensity over long time durations creates endurance. You may be strong and fast but are you still after an hour?
5. Variety- You cannot cover all the essentials in one workout or one week. To be balanced you need to practice everything.
6. Sleep- Fully rested, performance increases. Too little or too much and performance suffers. Measure performance to adjust. 
7. Competition- Better than any pre-workout powder. When you see your friend pass you, you will work harder - no caffeine required.
8. Recovery- Hydrate, stretch, rollout, work on mobility, take rest days. Overtraining decreases performance, do not let that happen.
9. Measure- What gets measured gets managed. Track your workouts monitor your progress. Even personal records are meant to be broken.
10. Enjoyment- Pick an activity you love, measure your performance, get better at it. Forgive yourself for not staying on track, continue.

-Ben Costigan

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