A potential fix for your bingE eating habits.
Have you ever had an incredibly large urge to eat everything in the cupboard? Maybe you just don’t understand why you feel like pulling into Maccas for a few hash browns before work.
Now there is plenty of reasons for this but today I’m specifically talking about your SLEEP habits.
Bad sleep and eating are almost always connected.
A recent study showed the following
Patients who were sleep deprived often experienced one or more of the following:
They have stronger cravings to eat between dinner and bedtime.
They report increased cravings for highly processed and highly palatable foods.
They find their cravings “impossible” to resist when fatigued.
I’ve been on this vicious cycle. Often feeling down and upset about my binges and why I’m not strong enough to fight them.
If this sounds like some of your behaviours, I’d suggest taking a look into your sleep habits. There are ways to track and monitor your sleep but to start off try the following.
Turn off all electronic devices in the bedroom.
This will help you not only fall asleep faster but also in a calmer state. Most likely will eliminate you waking up to a repeat of a Friends episode you’ve seen 40 times.
Set regular sleep and wake times and stick to them.
Having a regular sleep schedule will help regulate the way your body operates around sleeping time. It’s hard to begin with but you’ll get to a point that your body will wake you without an alarm (which is also great for a good day). This includes the weekend. This where a lot of order turns into chaos. Most of us love a night out on the beers and a Sunday sleep in. Usually though, this rolls into Monday/Tuesday and puts you back into that “I’ve stuffed up my week cycle”.
Eliminate stimulants in the afternoon.
You may be able to fall sleep fine after having a coffee 2 hours before bed time but that doesn’t mean you’re getting the quality sleep you need.
If you’re interested in finding out how to track your sleep, be sure to look out for my post on the FItBit HR.
