3 SIMPLE WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT | HealthyMVMT Blog

Getting good sleep is vital for living a healthy life and maintaining a healthy weight! On average you should be getting anywhere between 7-9 hours of sleep.

What happens while you are asleep??

• Organs rest and recover, tissues repair, and protein synthesis occurs.
• Hormones that help regulate appetite control, stress, growth, metabolism, and other bodily functions are released.
• Memory consolidation occurs, allowing for the formation and storage of new memories. 

When you are not getting enough sleep, you will crave more and have less energy throughout the day! 

Exercise is great, but just like overeating, there is a serious matter referred to as overtraining. If you feel fatigued during workouts and feel like you're storing fat or not losing weight you could be overtraining. It's not uncommon to get carried away especially if initially you see results and want to continue doing more and more. You may actually be working against your body!

Working out for long periods of time can spike your cortisol levels (stress hormone). Let me break it down - so we all know a lot of stress is not good for our bodies, right? Exercise is good, but it is also a stressor on the body. Too much exercise = stress = high cortisol levels = fat storage. Make sense? Our bodies read stress as stress, it doesn't matter where the stress is coming from. 

Your body actually thinks it's doing you a favor by holding onto that unwanted fat because it's in fight or flight mode, and believes you could possibly need it for the future. Your body will release the fat when it feels that you are less stressed. Make sure you give yourself ample time to rest and recover. Most importantly, don't forget to supplement your rest periods by refueling with nutritious, whole food!!

Food sensitivities are a lot more common then you think. There's a reason why you're bloated after eating that pizza! Food intolerances can cause inflammation, and put stress on your body. (And we all know what stress causes.) Start by cutting out gluten, dairy, corn, soy and sugar. Those are some of the most common food sensitivities. You may not have an immediate reaction after the food or sometimes you may not notice anything at all - which is why I suggest getting tested for food intolerances!

P.S. - Doctors and researchers are discovering that inflammation over time is the root of many health problems, so it is important to keep inflammation at a minimum!!