If you want to lose weight, get a six pack and feel healthy you have to use everything to your advantage, from eating healthy to exercise and something that most people forget is to sleep enough.

I did some research and found some studies that show a connection between lack of sleep and obesity. So why does low quantity and quality of sleep affect your weight?

Sleep Hormones and Weight

What researches concluded is that not sleeping enough or having a poor quality sleep affects 2 key hormones that regulate your appetite. These two hormones are Leptin and Grehlin and they control your appetite, therefore influencing your weight gain or weight loss.

The hormone Grehlin increases your appetite and hunger. Leptin does the opposite, it calms and decreases your appetite.

Chronic lack of sleep or increases the levels of Grehlin and decreases the amount of Leptin. This makes your appetite increase and you get more cravings that are hard to handle. The lack of sleep increases appetite and is one of the factors that increases weight gain and obesity.

Keep in mind that poor quality sleep can be linked to other factors that also increase weight like medication, stress, eating unhealthy, irritability, lack of energy, etc. When more than one of these factors work against you they can be responsible for starting a downward spiral to more severe health problems and not only obesity.

Imagine someone that doesn’t sleep enough, takes medication, eats unhealthy, is dehydrated and feels insecure about their appearance. This persons appetite is augmented by the lack of sleep and the dehydration. Dehydration also increases the desire to eat empty foods and empty calories. Because that person doesn’t eat what the body needs he or she always feels hungry a short time after eating some foods with no nutrition.

Because of all the sugar and lack of water, digestive problems develop which give more stress and make it even harder to sleep… See where this is going? Its a downward spiral, from bad to worse.

Normalizing sleep patterns and making sure that you sleep long enough will make it easier to lose weight because you can control your cravings better. Those cravings for sugar and fat that seem uncontrollable can be weakened by sleeping better. When you feel well rested your immune system and hormonal levels are kept under control because it is during the night that these systems are restored and recharged.

Paul Check has a system called The Last 4 Doctors you Will Ever Need. The four doctors are: Dr. Quiet, Dr. Diet, Dr. Movement and Dr. Happiness. Dr. Quiet, which is sleep and introspection (meditation and so on) is the first part you need to get working on. This has more benefits that normalizing your Leptin and Grehlin levels and controlling your appetite. When you are well rested you can handle more stress and problems, your immunity is stronger and you feel much better. This leads to more brain power and motivation to achieve your goals, from getting healthy to pursuing your other dreams.

How to Sleep Better

Here are some tips to sleep better:

• Don’t consume caffeine, alcohol or nicotine in the evening. These substances will interfere with your healthy sleep pattern and sleep quality.
• Do relaxing things in the evening; read a book and listen to calm music. Do not do stressful things like trying to solve your problems, pay bills or any other things that make you worry.
• If you exercise or eat, do it at least 3 hours before you go to sleep. Digestion and exercise elevate your body temperature and make you go to the toilet, which will disrupt your sleep pattern.
• Dim the lights and wind down in a silent and calm environment. Setting the mood to sleep is very important to be able to fall asleep fast.

There are many diets and tips on how to lose weight and how to get a six pack, some of them don’t work but many do. The biggest problem that people face when getting fit is lack of motivation and quitting. The most important thing in weight loss is the mindset because it will make you hang on and follow a healthy eating plan, do your exercises and rest enough. Having a healthy sleeping pattern is crucial because it will diminish the “uncontrollable cravings” that some people have and can’t go up against.

Enough good sleep will give you mental clarity, less stress, more endurance, stronger immunity and a normal appetite. It will directly influence your mindset and motivation and that is why it is so important for your health and fitness! I hope you found this article helpful and if you have any comments or questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Some people eat healthy, go to the gym, go running, don’t drink alcohol and make it look easy. They are not sacrificing anything, they just have that mindset and life happy like that and they make it look really easy.

For other people the biggest challenge to get fit is to take action and keep their motivation.

Some people can’t imagine themselves being happy if they don’t eat what they are eating now, if they can’t be lazy or if they have to stop smoking.

There are hundreds of thousands of pages published on nutrition and exercise but they are all worthless if you don’t apply them. This article is about creating the mindset to embrace a lifestyle that will let you be happier, live longer and look better.

Manny people start their weight loss quest with an overly optimistic attitude and think that it will somehow be easy. This may be because you believe in the marketing tactics that supplement companies use and all the headlines on the magazines with their “Ripped abs in 3 weeks” articles. You have to be prepared for the challenge, losing fat is not easy. Especially for people who like to eat and sit on the couch.

To ensure that you have success in your objective to feel and look fit you need education on the subject, you need commitment to your body (eating habits and exercise)… and you need to not quit doing those things.

People get fat because they like to eat a lot, are lazy and don’t like to do exercise. If you are in one or more of those categories you have to accept that you have to adjust your lifestyle, your eating habits and your exercise habits. You can lose weight by doing crash diets and intensive training schedules but if you lapse back to your old habits it will be a big waste of time, sweat and effort. You will get that fat back faster than you got rid of it and you will feel miserable because of it.

Worst of all, most people that regain weight get even heavier than they were before they started their weight loss journey.

How to get a six pack and keep it

Crash dieting and exercising like crazy can lead to a six pack but that is only theory and I will explain why. Manny people somehow believe they can get ripped in a ridiculously short time frame with no prior experience because they believe the tv ads.

Then they start their quest for muscular definition and quit before achieving their objective. Some people aren’t even aware that they quit because they thought that it was too much suffering, so much exercise and eating too healthy… These people quit before they started or you can say they didn’t really start.

As I just said, crash dieting and exercising like crazy can get you a six pack (if you don’t quit), but going to old habits again will destroy it… what can you do?

Create your “Six Pack Lifestyle”

The solution to this is to change your lifestyle by gradually implementing habits that you can commit to in the long term. The difference between lifestyle and a “diet” is the commitment: a diet is something temporary that you can’t wait to finish. A lifestyle change is integrated into you daily habits and is not a chore.

These habits have to be compatible with you and your life because you can’t implement things that are unpleasant and a big sacrifice. Doing things that you don’t like will not make you happy and you can’t keep them up forever.

“Diet” vs Lifestyle

Most people go on a diet and it is a chore, a sacrifice. This sacrifice will help lose weight and once they achieve their objective – they can go back to their hamburger and coke eating and drinking habits (the big majority can’t even achieve their objective… they quit).

Guess what… the human body can gain fat just as fast and it can lose it. People go back to their bad habits and gain their weight back and put some more on it to have a new body weight record!

If you have to do things that you do not like, if it is unpleasant it will be such a boring chore that you will hate it and lose motivation quickly. You will start thinking that “It is not worth it… its too hard. Having a six pack and looking good is a superficial goal anyway… I wanna be who I am… I don’t wanna exercise…” and that is loser talk.

Why you want a six pack

You get fit because it is healthy and it looks good. You will live longer and be happier because of it.

To be able to lose weight and get six pack abs you need to make changes to your lifestyle and commit to them. This will help you keep your motivation and it will make you happier, because you will enjoy your new life more and you will see results. In other articles I will give you lifestyle tips to get lean and healthy and you will be surprised that many of these tips are easy to apply.

You have to apply one tip at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. This way you can internalize these tips and adapt to them gradually without it being a big shock. When you think about the long term it is easier to stay committed to these changes. I hope you enjoyed this article on how to get the right mindset for six pack abs and weight loss!