Do you or someone you know snore? Do you or someone you know need to lose weight? Did you know that snoring has negative effects on weight loss? Did you know that addressing one issue, can help the other? Body Designs 2017: Stop Snoring…Lose Weight will shed light on the topic.
Most people know that there are many pitfalls to an unhealthy lifestyle which leads to weight gain or prevents weight loss while they are awake. Eating or drinking too much of the not-so-good stuff is obviously at the top of the list. Being too busy or lazy to exercise is a close second.
How about after hours? Is your time spent sleeping hindering your fitness goals? Many articles on sleep and fitness have documented the reasons why the goal should be to get seven to nine hours of “restful” sleep.
But does “restful” only mean not tossing or turning or waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom? Not necessarily.
For those who are overweight, snoring happens when the tissue of airway walls in the nose and mouth are so large, when relaxed, remain too close together and vibrate as air passes by. This can result in the body spending less time in the restorative stage of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM). It is during this stage of sleep when more calories are burned throughout the night. Believe it or not, optimally, a body can burn up to 60 calories a night. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot. But, over a year (365 days), that’s 21,900 calories. Which is over six pounds of fat loss in a year just by being able to stay in REM sleep.
Other negative effects of a lack of deep sleep include being less motivated to exercise and more hungry for high-caloric foods (as the body is looking to replenish needed energy it didn’t get overnight).
As you can see, these are not optimal conditions to lose weight. You can’t lose weight because you snore. And you can’t stop snoring because you can’t lose weight. So what is a snoring Body Designer to do? Well, it isn’t really a chicken or an egg thing (even though the chicken was first. See Genesis 1:25, The Sixth Day). I think it is pretty obvious that it is easier to control one’s weight than whether or not one snores.
“When we gain weight, we put it on all over, including in our tongue,” says Steven I. Atchuler, MD, PhD, a doctor in the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Sleep Medicine in Rochester, MN. Therefore, it makes sense that the inverse also holds true. When we lose weight, our tongue, as well as the tissue that is in the way of airflow when we breathe, shrink. This will result in wider passageways for air when we sleep and reduce the amount of snoring. This in turn, will result in more time spent in REM sleep which, if combined with sensible eating and exercise, more weight loss.
So, even though it might be an uphill battle at first, if you reduce your waistline, you may also reduce your snore time. Therefore, if you have a snorer (who could stand to drop a few pounds), sharing your bed, why not share Body Designs 2017: Stop Snoring…Lose Weight.
