Two of the biggest threats to your metabolism & overall health are chronic stress and overeating. Interestingly, chronic stress drives overeating and overeating creates additional stress. It’s what’s known as a “feed forward” cycle.
In today’s episode we’re talking about how stress (physical and emotional) drives appetite and cravings while impairing your ability to make sound decisions.
Most importantly, we’ll be talking about dietary and lifestyle changes you can make to not only reduce the chronic stressors in your life but also improve your response to them.
In October 2019, our relationship with Thrive Market changed. They decided to put their marketing dollars in avenues outside of podcasting but we still think they’re a good choice if you’re looking to save money on health & personal care products.
We aren’t getting enough sleep. We wear our fatigue (and talk about it) like it is a badge of honor. It’s not. You’re not tough. You’re not hardcore. You’re damaging your long-term health and dramatically impeding your fat loss.
If you haven’t guessed, we’re talking about sleep, hormones and fat loss on today’s episode.
The average American is only getting 5-7 hours of sleep each night. That doesn’t make a warrior, it makes a hormonally imbalanced, hungry person prone to fat storage, muscle loss and disease.
I hope that late-night TV is worth it!
Seriously though – this is really important stuff. Sleep deprivation, even moderate sleep deprivation over just a few short days impacts your hormones, impairs your metabolism, increases your appetite and changes the way the food you eat is metabolized.
In today’s episode I’ll be talking about 3 of the significant fat loss related changes initiated by mild sleep deprivation.
Today we’re diving into the nitty gritty of how sleep deprivation impacts your hormones and fat loss.
Lack of sleep changes how the food you eat is metabolized
Mild sleep deprivation exaggerates the post-prandial blood sugar response. This means that when sleep deprived, you’ll see a more significant blood sugar increase than you would after eating the same meal when well rested. Lack of sleep also impairs pancreatic function, leading to insulin resistance. These effects are seen after just a few days of mild sleep deprivation.
Lack of sleep increases your appetite & decreases your feelings of satiety
Lack of sleep disturbs the ratio of ghrelin to leptin, the hormones which manage hunger and satiety. This means that when you are even mildly sleep deprived, you experience more hunger and less satiety. Human studies show increases in appetite up to 40% after mild, short-term sleep deprivation.
Lack of sleep impairs your cellular fat burning machinery
Human growth hormone is one of our night-shift hormones. It is primarily produced & secreted while we sleep and is responsible for growth, recovery and cellular repair. When we aren’t getting enough sleep, we aren’t allowing growth hormone to do it’s job, resulting in lower muscle mass, higher fat mass and reduced fat burning abilities.
If you’ve listened to much of the Primal Potential podcast, you understand that fat loss is very much about hormones. There are 3 hormones in particular that we can consider “the fat loss hormones”. If we understand how they work and what specific choices we can make to make sure these fat loss hormones are working our favor, we’re well on our way to our best health & the achievement of our goals.
We’ll be talking a lot more about hormones in the next few weeks but for today I want to begin with an overview of these 3 powerhouse fat loss hormones: cortisol, leptin & insulin.
Leptin – leptin is a hormone produced by your fat cells that acts as a messenger between your body fat and your brain. When working properly, leptin works with your brain to regulate your appetite. As your body fat increases, leptin production increases and tells your body to increase metabolism and decrease appetite. As body fat decreases, leptin secretion decreases so the brain triggers an increase in appetite and decrease in metabolism. Unfortunately, leptin can quickly become disregulated with both crash dieting and weight gain, causing leptin resistance and impairing the brain’s ability to receive signals from leptin.
Cortisol – cortisol is a stress hormone released by the adrenal glands in response to physical, emotional or mental stress. Cortisol’s job is to prepare your body for the fight-or-flight emergency response. One of the ways it prepares your body is by making sure there is plenty of sugar (glucose) in your blood stream so you’re able to escape from the threat. Unfortunately, in this day & age, the threat is often a traffic jam, losing your keys or a fight with your spouse and no escape is necessary. Sure, you might see that as a good thing, but it means you’re left with unneeded sugar in your blood stream that has to be stored. Many people get frustrated with lack of fat loss results despite eating clean & managing blood sugar. They tend to overlook the stress effect. Cortisol will break down muscle glycogen or muscle tissue to provide sugar for the blood, regardless of your diet. Because of this, stress management is a critical part of fat loss.
Insulin – I’ll join the ranks of those who refer to insulin as the master fat loss hormone. It’s critically important. You can listen to an episode all about insulin here. The point of today’s episode is to show you that caring for your carb strategy isn’t enough if you want to achieve your health & fat loss potential. You can mess with insulin if you aren’t caring for cortisol, which is where most people pay little to no attention. Insulin is secreted by the pancreas in response to elevated blood sugar. Insulin’s job is to usher the blood sugar out of the blood to either provide immediate fuel for cells or to be stored for later use. The presence of insulin puts the body in storage mode. Because cortisol can increase blood sugar independent of diet, managing insulin is about both diet & lifestyle.
Definitely listen to the full episode for a conversation about what we can do, from a diet & lifestyle perspective, to help these hormones work in our favor! There’s a lot we can do!
To kick off the New Year, I am doing a series called Fat Loss Basics! This is the first episode of the series and I’ll be covering all the basic information about calories, hormones, fat loss foods & fitness.
Today we will establish when calories matter and why a calorie deficit is not sufficient for fat loss.
In this first episode of the Fat Loss Basics series, we go into detail on a few fat loss truths. Definitely listen to the entire episode to understand them in their entirety and be sure to listen to the whole series as it becomes available!
A calorie deficit is required for fat loss
A calorie deficit does not ensure fat loss
Fat burning is turned on & off by your hormones
The two primary hormones in control of fat loss are glucagon & insulin
We can control both insulin & glucagon with our food choices
Insulin is an important & necessary storage hormone. Insulin is responsible for delivery fuel to our cells & ushering excess fuel to storage sites within the body (this can be muscle storage or fat storage).
Without insulin, our cells would starve & we would die.
The presence of insulin informs the body that there there is ample fuel in the body and therefore fat burning is not required.
Glucagon works opposite of insulin.
Glucagon responds when there is no fuel available from food. The presence of glucagon allows fat to be released from storage and burned to provide energy to the body.
A calorie deficit alone is not enough to instruct glucagon to do it’s job.
You need a calorie deficit & control of insulin/glucagon.
Here are a few ways you can control insulin & glucagon to maximize your fat burning potential:
