Sleep is way more involved in your health and nutrition than you may even realize. If you find yourself struggling to get a good night’s sleep, you are not alone, 35% of adults report sleeping less than 7 hours a night, plus somewhere between 50-70 million have a sleep disorder.
How well you sleep, contributes not only to your energy levels, but also your ability to focus, be present and make important decisions about your health including your food choices.
The relationship between sleep and food choices is bidirectional one.
Therefore, what you eat will affect your sleep. Just as, your sleep duration and how deep you sleep will impact what food you choose to eat.
When you aren’t getting adequate and quality sleep, it will certainly influence your food choices and thus your health.
Why You Need Sound Sleep?
Sleeping each night is vital for restoring your mind and body.
During sleep your body systems are growing and repairing by means of alterations in brain-wave activity, decreases in heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, blood oxygen saturation and body temperature occur to support a sustained restful sleep.
Sleeping well is closely connected to your mood, behaviors, performance, and productivity. Yet, still many are not clocking in enough nightly sleep hours and/or aren’t getting the quality sleep that supports mental and physical health.
Shorter sleep sessions of <7 hours per night, is linked to increased risk of diabetes, depression and heart disease including hypertension, high cholesterol, heart attack, and stroke. As well as increased inflammation that overwhelms the immune and antioxidant systems within your body.
The good news here is that getting adequate sleep can reverse these affects. Ideally 7.5-8 hours nightly for adults of good quality sleep.
What interferes with sleep quality?
Think lifestyle habits— drinking caffeine, timing of sleep, exposure to bright lights during dark nigh hours and electronic exposure are contributors to poor sleep conditions. These habits are believed to disrupt circadian rhythms— your body’s natural physical, mental, and behavioral sequences that are part of your daily cycle which can lead to increased appetite, calorie intake and also decreases in dietary quality.
The Food and Sleep Connection
3 ways sleep influences food choices
1. Good Sleep Could Mean, Eating Whole Foods.
Research suggests eating fiber, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables are linked with longer sleep duration, better sleep quality, and fewer insomnia symptoms. On the flip side, lower intake of fruits and veggies was associated with poor sleep quality and clocking less hours of sleep.
2. Cravings for unhealthier foods with less sleep time.
Adults who slept <6 hours per night consumed an increased percentage of daily calories from fat, snacks, and alcohol. Possibly due to alterations in brain waves that results in a preference for highly palatable foods. Additionally alcohol may help you to relax but ultimately your sleep quality will suffer.
3. Not getting enough sleep is also linked to overeating.
Lack of sleep also decreases your ability to control emotional responses, reduces attention span, memory, and your ability to think clearly. Which means the potential for less awareness of true physical hunger coupled with an inclination to respond to stressful situations or an abundance of appetizing foods by eating, whether or not you are physically hungry.
Tips for Restful Sleep
Get to the root cause.
Are you having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep? Figuring out what is causing these disruption is the first step in finding ways to restore a better sleep cycle. A sleep questionnaire is a useful tool to ask insightful questions to uncover the root cause of sleep troubles.
Create a sleep schedule.
A regular sleep schedule will nurture your circadian rhythm. Ideally getting to bed and awaking up around the same time each day will help normalize these natural cycles, to improve sleep.
Form a night time routine.
Designing your own nightly ritual is a nice way to get yourself in a comfortable calm head space to promote restful sleep. Reading for 15-minutes, gentle yoga, meditation, using lavender essential oil or soothing sounds to create a peaceful environment.
Design a peaceful bedroom.
Let you bedroom be a haven for relaxation and sleep. Reduce the electronics, get room darkening shades, turn off any disruptive noises and dim the lights. The idea is to create an atmosphere that triggers your parasympathetic nervous system ‘rest and digest”, so you are able to get into a peaceful, calm state at least 30 minutes before bed time.
Consider your food intake.
Consuming whole foods, primarily plants is the first step. But there is more to it than just “eat healthier to sleep better”…
After years of helping clients, I have a clear method for changing dietary habits, it is one thing to say “eat better”, it is another to actually practice eating well regularly.
This is why I support my clients by setting realistic goals, developing daily habits that create impactful changes to their health and quality of life for the long haul.
In my 1-1 personalized nutrition coaching sessions we will dive deep to address root causes, related to sleep, nutrition, digestion, environmental triggers as well as restoring a healthy relationship with food and of course addressing common nutrient deficiencies, which may be contributing to poor sleep quality as well. Interested in working with me? Fill out this form here to get started.
Resources
1. Luyster FS, Strollo PJ, Zee PC, Walsh JK. Sleep: a health imperative. Sleep 2012;35:727–34.
2. Devon L. Golem, Jennifer T. Martin-Biggers, Mallory M. Koenings, Katherine Finn Davis, Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, An Integrative Review of Sleep for Nutrition Professionals, Advances in Nutrition, Volume 5, Issue 6, November 2014, Pages 742–759, https://doi.org/10.3945/an.114.006809
Leave a Reply