Wanting to lose weight is a common goal for many individuals, including those who enter our transformation challenge.
Common weight loss advice is to “eat less, move more”, and this is certainly an effective method for removing excess weight from the body.
However, “eating less” and “moving more” are things that we do while being awake during the day.
But, what about when we sleep?
After all, we spend ~8 hours per night sleep...which is ⅓ of an entire day!
Surely there’s some tricks, hacks, or lifestyle habits that can be employed to help burn more fat while you sleep...right?I
It just so happens that there is.
Here are 5 tricks to burning fat while you sleep!
Top 5 Tricks to Burning Fat While You Sleep
#1 Get More Sleep
This may seem fairly obvious (or not, to some), but getting more sleep will help you burn more fat and ultimately lose more weight.
There are many reasons why getting more sleep helps burn more fat.
For starters, getting adequate sleep keeps the body’s hormones in proper alignment, which optimizes the body’s utilization and storage of energy.
Not getting enough sleep (sleep deprivation) is a major stressor to the body and is known to disrupt energy metabolism, reduce fat burning, and promote fat storage. Moreover, sleep deprivation also reduces how much you move around during the day (due to being tired) and decreases motivation to exercise, both of which lower how many calories you burn each day, undermining your efforts to lose weight.
Sleep deprivation also messes with hunger and satiety cues, increasing your desire for high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie foods while also reducing how full you feel following mealtime. Again, both of these things impair your efforts to lose fat.
Research also shows that individuals who get more sleep have better leptin and ghrelin signaling. Leptin is a satiety hormone, and ghrelin is a hunger hormone. Proper functioning of these hormones is crucial to keeping energy intake under control while dieting for fat loss.
Many individuals have trouble getting quality sleep each night. If you fall into this category, you can try several things, including:
- Setting a bedtime
- Following a bedtime ritual
- Avoiding blue light at least 2 hours before bed
- Limiting exposure to stress (news, social media, email, texts, etc.)
- Keeping your room cool and dark
- Wearing loose fitting clothes
- Meditating
- Journaling which can help offload ideas that may be weighing on your mind
You can also look into various supplements that help reduce stress, promote feelings of calm, relaxation and aid sleep quality, such as melatonin, L-Theanine, and 5-HTP.
We’ve developed two stellar nighttime relaxation and recovery aids, in Recharge PM and Beauty Dream PM, that help quiet a busy mind and hyperactive CNS while encouraging deep, restorative sleep. These innovative products also contain ingredients to help the body burn more fat during sleep, including Green Tea extract and naringin.
#2 Lift Weights
While lifting weights is technically something done while your awake, the truth is that it can also help increase calorie burning while you sleep. The reason for this is due to the afterburn effect.
You see when you perform intense physical activity, such as resistance training, HIIT, or sprinting, you elevate your metabolism while your exercising but also for many hours afterwards.[1]
Intense exercise is incredibly disruptive to your physiology and in order to restore homeostasis, your body has to consume extra oxygen and expend more calories.
In fact, research has found that a single resistance training session may boost metabolism for up to 72 hours following a workout.[2]
Beyond the additional calories burned as a result of the afterburn effect, resistance training also helps you build muscle and gain strength. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns at rest, which helps increase how many calories you’re burning during sleep!
#3 Have a Pre-Bed Protein Shake
For decades it was believed that you shouldn’t eat immediately before bed since you won’t be active and thus any calories ingested will be stored as fat.
While that might make sense from a certain point of view, the truth is that human physiology isn’t that simple. It’s rather complex.
Furthermore, while you may not be moving around while you sleep, there is actually a flurry of activity that occurs while you sleep. Glycogen stores are being replenished, muscle tissue is being repaired, hormones are being produced, memories are being processed, sorted, and stored, etc.
All of these processes require energy (calories).
Moreover, research has also shown that not only does have some protein before bed enhance muscle recovery and growth, it may also boost fat burning and weight loss![3]
Additional studies find that consuming a higher protein diet leads to greater total energy expenditure and increased fat oxidation (fat burning).[4]
Consuming a pre-bed protein shake, such as 1UP Whey Protein or 1UP Organic Vegan Protein, helps make sure you’re getting enough protein throughout the day as well as ensures your muscles have ample amino acids while your body sleeps to support muscle recovery and growth.
#4 Make Your Room Cold
Above we mentioned that one of the ways to improve overall sleep quality is to keep your room cool and dark. The simple truth of the matter is that your body gets deeper, more restorative sleep when it’s placed in a cool environment.
And, as we also mentioned above, getting adequate sleep each night helps you burn more calories during the day.
But, making your room colder may also help you actually burn more fat while you sleep.
Research has found that individuals who keep their bedrooms at a temperature of 66℉increased the amount of calories burned via brown fat thermogenesis up to 42%, and it also boosted metabolism by 10%.[5]
#5 Limit Alcohol Intake
Consuming too much alcohol isn’t only detrimental to your physique goals, but also your health. Even moderate amounts of alcohol consumed too close to sleep can impair sleep quality as well as your ability to burn fat while you sleep.
The reason for this is that your body prioritizes the metabolization of alcohol before any other nutrient, since for all intents and purposes it is a toxin.
So, while your body is busy processing and eliminating the alcohol from its system, it isn’t burning fat.
Furthermore, alcohol is also high in calories and lowers your inhibitions, making it more likely to gorge on high-calorie foods right before sleep, which again reduces how much stored body fat your body burns while you sleep.
Therefore, if you’re looking to maximize burning fat while you sleep, make sure to cut off your alcohol intake a few hours before bed.
References
- LaForgia J, Withers RT, Gore CJ. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J Sports Sci. 2006 Dec;24(12):1247-64. doi: 10.1080/02640410600552064. PMID: 17101527.
- Heden T, Lox C, Rose P, Reid S, Kirk EP. One-set resistance training elevates energy expenditure for 72 h similar to three sets. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2011 Mar;111(3):477-84. doi: 10.1007/s00421-010-1666-5. Epub 2010 Oct 1. PMID: 20886227; PMCID: PMC3071293.
- Tim Snijders, Jorn Trommelen, Imre W. K. Kouw, Andrew M. Holwerda, Lex B. Verdijk, Luc J. C. van Loon. The Impact of Pre-sleep Protein Ingestion on the Skeletal Muscle Adaptive Response to Exercise in Humans: An Update. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2019; 6 DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2019.00017
- Camila L P Oliveira, Normand G Boulé, Arya M Sharma, Sarah A Elliott, Mario Siervo, Sunita Ghosh, Aloys Berg, Carla M Prado, A high-protein total diet replacement increases energy expenditure and leads to negative fat balance in healthy, normal-weight adults, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, , nqaa283, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqaa283
- Lee P, Smith S, Linderman J, Courville AB, Brychta RJ, Dieckmann W, Werner CD, Chen KY, Celi FS. Temperature-acclimated brown adipose tissue modulates insulin sensitivity in humans. Diabetes. 2014 Nov;63(11):3686-98. doi: 10.2337/db14-0513. Epub 2014 Jun 22. PMID: 24954193; PMCID: PMC4207391.
