Healthy Living Strategies Kuel Category Expert: Diana Devi
Night time belly fat and wrinkle reducer, no equipment required. Sound too good to be true? How could it be? What could I do every night to minimize my wrinkles, and as a side bonus help flatten my stomach?
No, it is not a night time exercise routine. Not a cream that you apply nightly. It is not medication; nor, a machine that you hook up to every night.
But before I tell you what it IS, ask yourself these 5 questions:
- Do you wake up in the morning and notice you have wrinkles or puffy eyes, more than when you went to bed?
- Did you have a good night’s sleep or were you tossing and turning?
- Are you currently under a lot of stress that is impacting your sleep?
- Are you falling asleep while binging on Netflix or some other video channel?
- Or, are you a sleep martyr and you wear it like a badge of honor?
What is the solution? It is one of the most basic things that humans, and for that manner all animals, do. It is something we did before we were born ….sleep.
Scary Trend:
“Not sleeping enough is a major health concern”
What trend has been growing every year, with more dire health consequences, not only on the way that we feel but also on the way that we look? After all they are related! The answer is sleep deprivation. Not sleeping enough is a major health concern. It affects our ability to fight off infection, contributes to weight gain especially around the mid section, and ages you. We all have those friends that wear sleep deprivation like a merit badge and perhaps you do too!
Sleeping less than seven hours per night impacts how we look, feel and our overall state of health. Some people will require more than seven hours, but seven is a good place to start!
Find it hard to believe? I’ll explain a little bit more.
The Wrinkle Factor:
When we sleep our bodies start what I call the “Repair, Restore and Revitalize Process”. Meaning our bodies use this time to repair our cells by getting rid of chemicals that are harmful and slow down our repair processes. We replace the damaged or injured cells with new perfect cells. It is a normal part of life to have wrinkles, how many and how deep they are is a function of how easy we make it to repair our bodies. Think about it for a second. Remember when you were up all night for some reason or had a particularly stressful day? How did your face look the next morning? Was it wrinkled and drawn? Did your eyes look more sunken?
Yes, it is still important to eat good foods and to stay hydrated. Several of my clients who were eating well and drinking lots of water noticed significant improvement by adding this third component, sleep, to the mix!
The Belly Fat Factor:
“when your body is sleep deprived it uses food to push you through the day by making you think you are hungry”
Fat cells need their sleep too! Sleep regulates two very important hormones in our body, ghrelin and leptin. These two hormones impact fat cells. Is it important that you remember these names? No, it is important to remember the concept! This is how it works.
Ghrelin stimulates your appetite, making you want to eat more. Leptin counteracts it by decreasing your appetite. If you’re sleep-deprived,(meaning less that seven hours of sleep) the level of ghrelin goes up, leptin goes down, making you feel more hungry.
In plain English, when your body is sleep deprived it uses food to push you through the day by making you think you are hungry. You eat more calories than you need. And, because of these hormones, fat is deposited around your belly.
Understanding why you have certain cravings when you are tired will help you to develop tools to counteract the cycle. Hopefully this will motivate you to prioritize sleep!
In Conclusion:
“Sleeping eight hours will not offset the affects of eating a dozen donuts”
Now you know the importance of sleep and its role in the “Repair, Restore and Revitalize Process” of maintaining the healthiest skin and tissues You also understand how your body uses food to push you through the day if you are sleep deprived.
I wish I could say if you enjoyed seven or eight hours of sleep per night you would have no wrinkles and would have a 26 inch waist. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Sleeping eight hours will not offset the affects of eating a dozen donuts, or that second piece of chocolate cake. It will not offset the effects that eating junk food and not drinking enough water have on your skin and the formation of deep wrinkles.
I am always more motivated if I understand the why: the reason it is important to do something. Hopefully, this article helps us all better understand the importance of sleep. I know we can all see, firsthand, the impact it has. All we have to do is to look in the mirror the morning after a short sleep night! The evidence is there!
In my next article I will talk about tools you can develop to achieve a sleep that will ‘Repair. Repair and Revitalize’ your body and face.
About the Author:
Diana is an empowerment coach for women over 50, building on her 30 years of experience as a clinical pharmacist and as an Argentine tango dancer. Diana’s goal is to help her clients become a W.H.I.P. “A Woman, who is Hot, Intelligent and in her Prime at EVERY age. When Diana is not working with clients or on the dance floor she is training her cats, CleoCatra ( an Egyptian Mau) and D’Artagnan (a Savannah) while patiently waiting for the day she can travel around the world to dance tango again. You can checkout Diana on her website: An Ageless Life.
