It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that sleep plays a crucial role on your physical fitness. Some things are obvious, while others may not be so obvious. Regardless your fitness goals, depriving yourself of sleep it making you miserable and ultimately, diminishing your efforts.
General Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Everybody has felt the effects of sleep deprivation at least once in their lives, but more likely than not, it’s a regular thing. These effects are things like grogginess, an inability to focus, and fatigue are some of the most common. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to depression, hormone imbalance, diabetes type 2, and obesity. Additionally, it’s believed that as much as 30% of the American workers are sleep deprived. Unfortunately, people who are often sleep deprived no longer notice the physical effects.
Sleep Deprivation’s Affect on Fitness
Now, let’s talk about why that matters to you and how it effects your ability to achieve your fitness goals. From the top, the grogginess, inability to focus, and fatigue go somewhat hand-in-hand. When you’re fatigued, you won’t feel like exercising. The inability to focus and the grogginess would make it harder for you to stick to your goals and to not care about it. In fact, sleep deprivation has shown to affect food choices in young men (increased portion size and more likely to eat low quality foods). Another key point is, during REM, your body produces HGH (Human Growth Hormone), which plays a vital role in building muscle and burning fat.
The above only brushes over how important sleep truly is. For some, regardless of whether or not you recognize how important sleep is, it’s a luxury that life isn’t rewarding you with right now. I personally have great difficulty falling asleep sometimes (which I’m working to resolve and will definitely be writing about in the near future), and some nights, I lay in bed for 5-6 hours and eventually just give up.
I’d love to get your feedback, if this post taught you something or if you have something to add, feel free to let me know in the comments below.