As many of us, I am concerned about my metabolism, how to burn as much calories as I can from all the food intakes everyday. Of course, there are many factors such as: our body itself, age, gender, health conditions, diets, physical activities...The bottom line is there’s no other way around but to exercise to burn as much calories as I can. I do yoga and elliptical machine since the pandemic because I am unable to go to my gym classes. Summer is coming around, I’m excited to swim every morning and chase Sonya around the pool to stop her from drinking pool water.😅
*What I am curious is during sleep IF I can improve the process of burning calories at basal metabolic rate (BMR)?
First and foremost, I need to make sure I get a good night rest at least 7-8 hours for my age group. According to Health line, our sleep quality is very important to BMR: “Sleep loss over time may contribute to weight gain and obesity. It elevates certain hormone levels in the body, like cortisol. This hormone makes you hold onto extra fat. Not only that, but it may also increase your appetite and lead to a slower metabolism.” Therefore, it is significant to adopt sleep hygiene.
According to Healthline, here’s a summary how to elevate the metabolism:
1. Eating late doesn’t slow the metabolism. It depends on what you eat and the quantity that you eat before bed time.
2. By incorporating strength training into exercising daily, our muscle mass can help us burn more calories than fat while sleeping.
3. Loosing weight may help boost our metabolism. (Muscle burns more calories than fat at resting stage).
4. Caffeine may increase metabolism slightly in short term. (Don’t drink before bed as it can make it harder to sleep).
5. Always discuss with your doctor, dietician before taking any supplements claiming to boost metabolism. (In my opinion, this is not the best approach).
You can calculate your BMR by following this formula (height in inches and weight in pounds):
* 66 + (6.2 x weight) + (12.7 x height) – (6.76 x age) = BMR for men
* 655.1 + (4.35 x weight) + (4.7 x height) – (4.7 x age) = BMR for women
In addition, according to Sleepfoundation, sleep stages affect calories burning: “The most energy-intensive sleep stage is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep, our heart rate increases and our brain exhibits activity patterns similar to daytime levels. The heightened brain activity requires more glucose, leading to a higher metabolism.” Hence, How do we improve REM sleep?
According to Medical News, here’s a summary how to improve:
1. Establish a bedtime routine.
2. Reduce night time waking, including no loud noises, bright light, warm temperatures (optimal temperature is 60-70F), electronic devices turned off...
3. Get enough sleep. Generally, 7-9 hours is considered adequate sleep hours.
4. Address medical conditions to your healthcare provider.
Hi Koko,This is all very interesting to me as I’m involved with F&F so know the benefits of not eating for just 12 or 14 hours.
Fortunately I sleep like a baby and usually sleep for more than 8 hours and can sleep for 9 or 10 if I’ve had an exhausting day.
As well as caffeine surfing the internet can over stimulate us because some people get frenetic and can’t stay off line which’s self defeating as they are posting when over tired. When they could be blissfully asleep and I know which my choice is.
Here’s an article about how our smart phones can cause us anxiety and stress:
To me the internet and social media are just more tools which can open more horizons but we have to keep things in perspective so our virtual lives don’t affect our real lives adversely..
Our stats on HealthyEating have almost doubled in the last month showing the popularity of social media so it’s up to us to make it work for us.
So thank you for your thoughtful post and I hope that you sleep well as we’re in different time zones on different continents which virtual reality bridges and this something I really like about social media. 😊
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Hi Jerry, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. 🙏
I absolutely love intermittent fasting as long as I keep myself hydrated with water and I do see health benefits from it.
I’m glad to hear you get adequate sleep hours every night because having a good night rest is like building a house; we need a strong, solid foundation for anything else to build on top. It is a reminder to us that no matter how brilliant any diet plans are if we don’t adopt sleep hygiene, it is going to have either adverse effects or none of any diet plan will work. Sleeping well gives us energy to exercise and a clear mind to make good decisions.
Thank you for sharing your article how internet and smartphone addiction can have negative effects on our brain. It is so interesting that they found the ratio of GABA to another neurotransmitter was off among these people. According to Frontiers in Psychiatry, it affects our intelligence and brain efficiency: “We find that a higher working memory index is significantly correlated with a lower GABA to glutamate ratio in the frontal cortex and with a lower glutamate level in the occipital cortex. Thus, it seems that working memory performance is associated with the excitation–inhibition balance in the brain.” Here’s the link: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
I agree, virtual lives are not our reality and that is the question of where is our focus coming in. We embrace the technology to open our horizon of knowledge and to bridge the gaps between human contacts. It is definitely up to us to not create any dilemma and havocs in our personal lives from participating in the chaos of social media.
I’m glad HealthyEating has been exposing to worldwide; hence, it is very important for us to keep it as a place of sophisticated posts with valuable information and civilized interaction among members. As a member of HE, I’m grateful for all admins relentlessly working hard to provide us a safe environment to positively share our experiences in our journey of health and wellness.
Thank you Jerry, I did have a great night sleep and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day! 😊🙏🌺
• in reply to
Thank you so much for this Koko it is greatly appreciated. 😊
Thank you for your post GreatMindfulness,
I love reading educational and healing posts from you posters. I feel blessed to be apart of this healing journey with you all. I think it is amazing to not feel alone and to have this platform for us people out here. Considering even close family members for some may not understand us, our friends may lack the understand of us, and ourselves may not understand ourselves.
Your kind words and encouragement is what we all need. Many of these posts resinate with me and are the answers to the questions I had.
Thank you for your time.
Kind Regards,
INI
• in reply to
Hi Happenstances, your message really touched my heart and I truly appreciate your love and support. 😊🙏 I am grateful to be able to share my experiences with you through my posts. We are humanitarians so we always lift each other up through our journey of health and wellness.
Thank you for being YOU and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day! 🤗🙏❤️🌺
You can increase your fat burn by not eating - for 20 hours a day or a few days at a time.
Being "warm enough" might make you sleep better - but being (slightly) cold would increase your calorie burn.
When we are cold, we tend to curl up into the "foetal" position - but, unfortunately, this involves sleeping on your shoulder, which I have had to avoid since Easter, having strained my acromioclavicular ligament.
Hi S11m, thank you for sharing your experiences with me. 🙏
I do love intermittent fasting and I’ve received many benefits from it.
It’s true our posture during sleep is important as I got strained by my dog one time 😅 and not by the coldness as i like tucking myself nicely around pillows 😂
Have a wonderful rest of your day! 😁🙏🌺
Hi Happyman4, thank you for sharing your experiences with me on this topic. 🙏
I am the same way as you, I always get a good night sleep when my room is cool and dark. I keep all electronic devices away from me as my bedroom is a sanctuary place for me to unwind by the end of the day. I also meditate for a least 20 mins before bed and it helps me falling asleep very fast. 😁
Yes, we can take time and reflect on all the posts and create our individual paths that work for ourselves.
Thank you for sharing goodness from your garden and continuing inspiring us with your delicious food posts.
BMR isn't a magical thing, out body has to change things to raise it.
The most obvious is to increase thermogenesis, ie raise body temperature, which can cause disturbed sleep (ask any menopausal woman!)
Another way is increase organs' calorie burn, particularly the brain, but an active mind is not conducive to a good night's sleep. REM sleep is important, but so is the delta wave period of deep sleep.
As for the other organs speeding up, what would that look like? Atrial fibrillation? And going to bed on a full stomach may increase BMR temporarily, but again, it's a recipe for disturbed sleep.
Our bodies need time to repair and rebuild. I think we should let our bodies rest while we sleep, not try to trick it into being more active. Save that for waking hours.
Hello Subtle_badger, I just woke up from a solid 8 hr sleep so I got the base covered! 😁 I need to go meditate and do yoga now but I will give you these points for you to do research better 👍:
1. No heat. Keep the room 60-70. Look up Cryotherapy, new trend in the beautiful City of Angels in the USA. 😇
2. Deep sleep: click on the link from sleep foundation I provided. At Stage 3 deep sleep, metabolism tends to be slowest
3. It is common knowledge what’s on earth who wanna go to bed with a full, heavy belly 😂😅
4. No jumping jack before or during sleep. No active mind, meditate, meditate, meditate . 😂
I have been very patiently explaining to you as it’s quite fun to do some time but next time I don’t think I will 😂. Have a good day now!
Your BMR only goes up if something changes inside your body. Thermalregulation is the most obvious way, but that raises your body temperature. If your temperature goes up, a room that was comfortable when you went to bed will be too warm. The other big way is increased activity in the body.
Do you know some mysterious 3rd way?
(i think you should be grateful that i didn't say anything about "vegetable ham", which sounds less plausible - and much less healthy - than protein butter)
Now, Subtle-badger, again you keep missing the mark of my post. It is not about increasing BMR while awake. Who doesn't know the best way is to exercise to burn calories and while exercising ofc your body temp goes up. My post just gave the ultimate way: eat right, exercise regularly, sleep well. I gave facts and tips to a good night sleep and once you get that good rest, your body and your mind will function at its best.
Now since you brought up two aspects: being grateful to you? 🤔 and my "vegetable ham" is much less healthy; therefore I will shed some lights on these for you.
1. What is in my “vegetable ham”? Assumption is one of human misery as it gives false perception through objective subconsciousness. My mother makes the most organic vegetable ham for me since she knows I do not consume animal meat. As she said if I’m going to eat, I have to eat the best 👌😇
2. Now I'm a mediator so I will enlighten you the true meaning of gratefulness so you can reflect for yourself. I am a meditator and I transform myself through the science of meditation. Gratefulness is a way of being through the utmost silence coming from deep within. It is so powerful that I find myself less complaining, less grumbling through life with both good and bad and blossom in my life journey of bliss.
By now, if you still are unable to understand my post I can’t help you further. I wish you best of luck in life! 😊🙏☯️🌺”
• in reply to
What an awesome mom. Vegetable ham. Neat.
Umm. You should have wrote this for me. That is what I am lacking. I am grateful. Yet I complain too much. Eve try thing given and not gove should be thanked for . I need to replace my grumbling with meditation and being more thankful.
• in reply to
Hi Happenstances, awe yes my mom is great. ❤️She loves cooking for her family now that she is retired. There are many chemicals in food sold from vendors, restaurants so she loves making food for me from scratch. I could easily just have takeouts from her but then I will loose my independence for sure. 😂🤣😅
You are a great person and very supportive of others. I rarely see you complain at all in HU community. 🤷♀️ Hmmm maybe you just judge yourself too hard. 🤔 Definitely meditation will help us loosing our egos. So happy meditate mama! 😁👍
Excellent post! This is so important for our health. I always tell myself I won’t look at my phone before sleep but I almost never do. I’m either skimming on here or browsing YouTube. But it does put me out. Along with the melatonin I take before bed.
Strength training is essential. The more muscle you have the more calories you can burn throughout the day even when asleep. But I’ve been doing more HIIT workouts and it is another great way to burn calories long after the workout. And it definitely sets you up for sleep as long as you don’t do it too late.
I think diet plays the biggest role in this. What and how much you put in your body matters. I’ve been doing the intermittent fasting like you and have been eating smaller meals so I’m not over taxing my body and it can do it’s job easier. I almost wish I drank caffeine because it does play a small role and burn free fatty acids. 🤪
Excellent reply Kainan!!! 😁U got the gist👌Those are main ideas how to maximize your metabolism for your body both awake and sleeping stage.
Put your phone away and meditate 20 min before bed and you don’t even need melatonin. 😂
Strength training is essential. Your muscle mass will burn more calories than fat even while sleeping. HIIT is great. I do squats with weights and plank daytime. I know you run for cardio so you got that taken care.👍
Diet is important and all that workout goes down the drain if you eat bad. For us, skipping breakfast is completely fine and we don’t eat until our stomach blowing up, stop when we start feeling full, don’t have to finish the plate.🤣
If you notice most metabolism supplements they add caffeine for diuretic effects.😅 I just drink 1-2 small cups of coffee a day so it gives me a little kick 😂
As mentioned "The heightened brain activity requires more glucose..", but cells can use ketones as well as glucose and as glucose increases the levels of insulin which drives all cells, including the nerves, then reducing glucose levels by lowering carbohydrate intake (espeially in the evenings) will give a more restful sleep.
Sorry, what? Fibre as your source of carbohydrates? That makes no sense.
Carbs can either be:
* Sugars
* Starches
* Insoluble fibre
* Soluble fibre
* Sugar alcohols.
The body responds to each differently. I would argy that you don't need starch or sugars, but if you do, fibre is not replacement for them. Our bodies treat fibre completely differently to starches or sugars so while you can vary your amounts of the types of carbs, you can't replace one with another and expect your body to respond the same.
I didn’t quite understand your sentence either, but I’m guessing you mean you like your carb sources to be ones which contain good amounts of fibre. Me too I prioritise higher fibre carbs 😀
Great post to raise awareness about factors that affect our sleep and good tips here for a good night sleep as well. An essential point you brought up was about REM sleep. REM sleep is important for our overall health so it would be beneficial if we can improve REM sleep . Good job keeping Sonya away from the pool water👍😸🙏😁
Yessss, Sonya always makes me run around the pool. She’s so smart, everytime she would run inside the back house and then come out when I turn around. 🤣😂😻
Correct. We need an adequate amount of sleep hours and sleep routine to improve REM time which is when our brains are rejuvenated. A clear mind will definitely help us feel energetic to tackle the day! 😁👍
Fit for life! And have a good rest of the day Zazen! 😊🙏🌺
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