How To Burn Fat Off: Sleep More!

Hundreds of magazines and books offer endless advice on how to burn fat off.

Although almost all these books and magazines will tell you to follow strict diets, eat certain "fat burning foods," and indulge in heavy exercise, very few of these approaches actually help you in learning how to burn fat off.

One of these "missing links" that very few people discuss is the simple act of getting more sleep each night.

Can more sleep actually affect you in your mission of figuring out how to burn fat off?

It's true, sleeping is one of the laziest things we do all day; however, sleep deprivation affects us in more ways than we can imagine. For instance, being even slightly sleep deprived will hurt your performance at a gym significantly. A drop in your intensity level will reduce the effectiveness of your weight training and cardio routine.

Less sleep will also hinder your body's ability to repair your muscles after weight training. If you are aware of how to burn fat off, you probably already know that one of the best ways to accelerate your metabolism is to up build muscle mass.

Also, increased levels of the appetite-stimulating hormone "grehlin" are released in the body when you are deprived of sleep. This makes it particularly hard to resist cravings for sweets and other success-stealing snacks, thereby affecting your diet.

By not sleeping enough, you are also naturally staying awake longer, and this means you're eventually consuming more calories. Hardly anyone chooses a healthy snack when it's midnight and they're still awake.

Going overboard on even just a few hundred calories each day can completely sabotage your efforts, regardless of whether or not you understand how to burn fat off.

Over and above, sleep deprivation hinders the body's synthesis of leptin.

Our appetite is kept under control by this hormone, which is found in the brain. Lower levels of leptin lead to greater calorie consumption, and this increases the time you spend at the gym attempting to understand how to burn fat off because you've overeaten again.

And there's more?br />
The lesser you sleep, the higher are the levels of cortisol in your body.

Cortisol, a hormone produced by our body, is to a great extent responsible for weight gain, particularly around your waistline.

High cortisol levels means you're losing muscle and storing more fat. Regardless of how much you know about how to burn fat off, you must know that this is the worst possible combination.

Talking of hormones, keep in mind that sleep deprivation also decreases your growth hormone and testosterone levels in the body.

The truth is that these two hormones in the body are the most powerful fat-burning substances.

So, how much should you sleep if you want to alter your body composition and learn how to burn fat off?

Seven to eight hours of quality sleep every night is recommended by the experts.

After reading this article it should be clear why those who think they're getting by with 4 to 5 hours a night are certainly negatively impacting their weight loss goals.

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