Sleep

Fruitbat

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I’ve always underestimated the need for sleep. I’ve just realised something.

I’m an emotional eater and when im run down I hit the pizza. My dieting usually looks like: 3-4 weeks brilliant discipline/work gets hectic/eat **** for one week/ back to discipline.

I’ve noticed my binges are almost ALWAYS tied into:

1. A big night drinking and feeling crap. This leads to almost a week eating crap
2. Poor sleep due to weather or schedule
3. If I travel a lot, usually have very sketchy schedule and just end up pigging out on hotel food
4. Poor sleep from caffeine

I had a boozy business trip with long meetings and I’ve just eaten crap for a full week.

Yesterday by chance I had little caffeine and I slept like a baby and woke up ready for the challenge and with discipline.

so, do you guys find sleep affect appetite?
Do you find caffeine wrecks your sleep?
How important is sleep generally?
How do you maximise the value of sleep?
Or is sleep overrated?
 

IKO69

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I’ve always underestimated the need for sleep. I’ve just realised something.

I’m an emotional eater and when im run down I hit the pizza. My dieting usually looks like: 3-4 weeks brilliant discipline/work gets hectic/eat **** for one week/ back to discipline.

I’ve noticed my binges are almost ALWAYS tied into:

1. A big night drinking and feeling crap. This leads to almost a week eating crap
2. Poor sleep due to weather or schedule
3. If I travel a lot, usually have very sketchy schedule and just end up pigging out on hotel food
4. Poor sleep from caffeine

I had a boozy business trip with long meetings and I’ve just eaten crap for a full week.

Yesterday by chance I had little caffeine and I slept like a baby and woke up ready for the challenge and with discipline.

so, do you guys find sleep affect appetite?
Do you find caffeine wrecks your sleep?
How important is sleep generally?
How do you maximise the value of sleep?
Or is sleep overrated?
Ever hear of Matthew Walker? He's like the world's foremost expert on sleep. He published a great book but there are also several great interviews on youtube (especially the Joe Rogan one) where he touches on a lot of what you said. Alcohol, Caffeine, eating big meals at certain times of the day can all contribute to disrupting your quality of sleep...this then cuts into your overall quality of life. I prioritized sleep after I came across his material.

If you're not a reader than you should definitely check out his videos - he's an informative and enjoyable interview (clearly because he's well rested).
 

Fruitbat

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Ever hear of Matthew Walker? He's like the world's foremost expert on sleep. He published a great book but there are also several great interviews on youtube (especially the Joe Rogan one) where he touches on a lot of what you said. Alcohol, Caffeine, eating big meals at certain times of the day can all contribute to disrupting your quality of sleep...this then cuts into your overall quality of life. I prioritized sleep after I came across his material.

If you're not a reader than you should definitely check out his videos - he's an informative and enjoyable interview (clearly because he's well rested).
Right - I am home alone today so am just pottering around tidying up. So I’ll put this on my headphones and will listen.

Naturally as a married man with the house to myself this will be just after I’ve visited pornhub
 

BackInTheGame78

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If you aren't sleeping 7-8 hours you are making losing weight 2-3x harder than it should be and basically trying to swim against the current.

Your hormones are all wrong. Lack of sleep is the most stressful things on the body and results in high cortisol levels and low T levels, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. It also greatly increases Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, which will make you ravenous throughout the day.

Sleep is a number one priority when attempting to lose weight.
 
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Dr.Suave

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I'm aging brilliantly. It helps to not have a job and sleep until noon every day. I don't have any money, but damn I look good.
Bro, How do you survive? Do you have a bunch of savings?
 

Murk

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8-9 hours daily, I don't set alarms, I wake up when I wake up then work out and get to work.

I absolutely love sleep and always have.
 

Fruitbat

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If you aren't sleeping 7-8 hours you are making losing weight 2-3x harder than it should be and basically trying to swim against the current.

Your hormones are all wrong. Lack of sleep is the most stressful things on the body and results in high cortisol levels and low T levels, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. It also greatly increases Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, which will make you ravenous throughout the day.

Sleep is a number one priority when attempting to lose weight.
Well this will explain things because regardless of my odd cheats, I’ve found it incredibly hard going last few months and my sleep has been AWFUL.

I tested T at 690 I think so no issues there but imagine what could be. I’ve averaged about 6 hours at best for 3 months.

I am weaning down on caffeine (I was having some crazy 1000mg+ days) and yesterday I had about 250mg all taken before 10am.

i slept a full 8 hours. Woke up twice and went back to sleep. The other thing is how DEEP the sleep was. Even this AM as I write I think I could take another 3 hours easy.
 

Modern Man Advice

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Sleeping is so critical for your physical and mental health.

Unfortunately, I suffer from Insomnia. The only workaround I've found is to simply find time during the day to take power naps. That usually balances my lack of sleep at night.

Some would recommend going to a dr. however I don't believe in modern medicine or the health care system so I stay away from pill pushers.

Maybe try meditation at night. Better nutrition/diet on a daily basis. Or like I do, take power naps during the day.
 

FlexpertHamilton

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so, do you guys find sleep affect appetite?
Sleep defiency has been proven to increase cravings for ****ty foods (particularly processed carbs/sugar) in addition to increased calories in general if i'm not mistaken

Do you find caffeine wrecks your sleep?
It does impair it a bit, yes. I like to go to sleep around 1am - if I drink caffeine as late as 5pm I can still fall asleep but the quality suffers. If I stop by around 2pm or so my sleep quality is much better.


How important is sleep generally?
There is nothing more important than sleep.


How do you maximise the value of sleep?
Not sure what you mean by this, sleep is both about quality and quantity. Don't drink caffeine (or use any drugs, including alcohol, pot) late in the day (depending on the half life of the drug, cutoff for me is usually about 4-6pm at the latest), get sunlight, wake up and go to sleep at the same times, use bluelight filters on screens, keep your place cool...lots of other things.


I'd highly recommend looking into the work of neuroscientist Dr Matthew Walker, he's done tons of podcasts and talks. Andrew Huberman (another neuroscientist) also has useful podcasts on the subject but his advice is really strange.
 

BackInTheGame78

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Sleep defiency has been proven to increase cravings for ****ty foods (particularly processed carbs/sugar) in addition to increased calories in general if i'm not mistaken



It does impair it a bit, yes. I like to go to sleep around 1am - if I drink caffeine as late as 5pm I can still fall asleep but the quality suffers. If I stop by around 2pm or so my sleep quality is much better.



There is nothing more important than sleep.



Not sure what you mean by this, sleep is both about quality and quantity. Don't drink caffeine (or use any drugs, including alcohol, pot) late in the day (depending on the half life of the drug, cutoff for me is usually about 4-6pm at the latest), get sunlight, wake up and go to sleep at the same times, use bluelight filters on screens, keep your place cool...lots of other things.


I'd highly recommend looking into the work of neuroscientist Dr Matthew Walker, he's done tons of podcasts and talks. Andrew Huberman (another neuroscientist) also has useful podcasts on the subject but his advice is really strange.
New research has found that having the same sleep/waking times is also very important, far more than they actually realized...

Even going to bed 30 minutes later than your normal time has shown some significant negative changes regardless of the actual time spent sleeping.

This likely explains why people with crazy work schedules that include overnights a few times a week have serious health issues a lot more frequently.
 

BackInTheGame78

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Do you mean sleep schedule consistency, or the time at which you physically go to sleep?

If you work 2nd shift and regularly go to bed at 2am, but always right at 2am = sleep schedule consistency.

Work 2nd shift and go to bed at 1am, sometimes 5am, depends how full your Netflix queue is = sleep schedule inconsistency.

Asking for clarity as I've heard it to be that schedule consistency matters more than the time which you go to sleep.
Sleep schedule consistency. The amount of time sleeping is also very important as well, but it won't be as effective if it's not consistently on the same schedule
 

Fruitbat

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Well, my caffeine has been cut about in half and I had my last one at 10.30am.

for the first time in months I just slept a whole night and didn’t wake up once. Slept a full 8 and woke up.

weird thing is I feel very tired on waking but I guess I’m just catching up.

I had no idea caffeine was this bad for sleep. I reckon if I gave it up completely I’d be sleeping for 12 hours
 

BackInTheGame78

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Well, my caffeine has been cut about in half and I had my last one at 10.30am.

for the first time in months I just slept a whole night and didn’t wake up once. Slept a full 8 and woke up.

weird thing is I feel very tired on waking but I guess I’m just catching up.

I had no idea caffeine was this bad for sleep. I reckon if I gave it up completely I’d be sleeping for 12 hours
Probably a good decision. Caffeine disrupts sleep even if you don't realize it. It will change the type of sleep you get, making it less of the deep restorative and more of the shallow surface level sleep where you wake up easier during the night.

Also the half life of caffeine is about 5 hours so even after 10 hours your body is still dealing with 25% of your caffeine intake.
 

Smartone84

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8-9 hours daily, I don't set alarms, I wake up when I wake up then work out and get to work.

I absolutely love sleep and always have.
What do you do for a living? I wish I could get a job that worked late. I've been working 8-4 and waking around 6:15am for the last 11 years. Always been a drag.
 
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