How to deal with difficulty sleeping
An essential but rarely mentioned part of the process of building muscle and losing fat is SLEEP! You can have the best nutritionist… the best personal trainer… the best workout… BUT what about sleep? Experts disagree about the ideal amount of rest… but you can’t do without a good night’s sleep: it improves your mood and performance and helps prevent illness.
And everyone needs to get the right amount of sleep for them.
Quality of rest
😴The most important thing is sleep quality! A 2010 study analyzed 10 overweight people in an experiment involving two different sleep durations, 8.5 hours and 5.5 hours, respectively. The same participants were used in both situations and followed the same diet.
The results showed that restricting sleep duration affects the body by reducing fat oxidation, increasing appetite, lowering basal metabolic rate, and causing muscle loss. In short: Get a good night’s sleep! And only stay out late if it’s really worth it…
Pay close attention to your sleep
Sleep is simply one of the most important activities for the body to function properly. Sleeping means taking a break every 24 hours—for 8 to 10 hours (which we’ll discuss in the next sections).
A good night’s sleep can improve performance at every level, including better reflexes during physical activity and mental alertness.
Mental rest is achieved by ensuring that brain processes and neural connections restore the organ’s function. Basically, the result is a “cleansing” of the brain during sleep, ensuring that memories and learned information are retained while information considered irrelevant is discarded.
As for rest between sets during a workout…
First of all, there is no set amount of time. Using 30, 45, or 60 seconds as a reference for the ideal rest period may not suit every strength-training trainee’s goals. Remember that every body has its own biological individuality, and we should respect that.
That’s why we use the concept of an “interval,” which generally ranges from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. But, I repeat, it isn’t fixed!
