Why Sleep Is the Missing Link in Midlife Fat Loss

[00:00:00] They're not losing weight. They're just trying to push harder, add to workouts, increase the intensity, cut their calories even further. But what they don't understand is what that creates, which is less sleep, higher cortisol, poor recovery. So it's taking longer to get over those workouts and just more inflammation. All of that makes fat loss difficult. People respond to stalled fat loss by pretty much doing the exact opposite of what they should do.

[00:00:27] They really don't need more output. They don't need to be pushing more on the pedal. What they need is more regulation.

[00:00:58] If you're working out three, four, even five days a week and the scale isn't moving, this episode is for you. Because here's what I need you to hear clearly. Your workouts are not the problem. Your body just isn't sleeping well enough to use them. Today we're talking about sleep and fat loss and why no amount of exercise can override poor sleep in midlife. It's such a relevant conversation. I'm sure so many people can relate to this. So I'm excited to dive into this episode. But first of all, hi, Doug. It's been a while. Hey, what's happening? What's happening?

[00:01:26] Definitely a good topic. And this will be a good episode because people seem to ignore sleep. Absolutely. It's so foundational. And it's just something that people don't really think about as much as we probably should. So I'm excited to help us with this. Sure. So let's hop in with talking about some mistakes that people make. So, Doug, what's the biggest mistake people make when fat loss stalls? Probably misdiagnosis.

[00:01:55] You know, they're trying to understand why they're not losing weight. You know, and, you know, the reality is, is the first thing people go to is I'm not training hard enough or I'm not training enough or I need to eat less. You know, and that's where everybody runs to, particularly the high achievers or anybody else.

[00:02:20] When you want something really bad, like weight loss, people tend to just try to push harder, you know, add the workouts, increase the intensity, cut their calories even further. But what they don't understand is what that creates, which is less sleep, higher cortisol, right? Poor recovery. So it's taking longer to get over those workouts and just more inflammation. And all of that makes fat loss difficult, you know, so I see it all the time.

[00:02:49] You know, people respond to stalled fat loss by pretty much doing the exact opposite of what they should do. You know, they really don't need more output. They don't need to be pushing more on the pedal. What they need is more regulation. Absolutely. And sleep was important at any age. But why does sleep matter so much more after the age of 40? Because at that point, sleep is no longer optional recovery. Right.

[00:03:17] It's like a metabolic requirement because sleep regulates insulin sensitivity. Right. Cortisol rhythms, appetite hormones. Right. Leptin and ghrelin. Right. Your growth hormone release and even muscle repair. You know, so that's like the holy grail of trying to be healthy, lose weight. And and and everything.

[00:03:43] So everything I mentioned is important for weight loss, for weight maintenance and longevity. So sleep as we get older becomes much more important. Much more important. You know, in your 20s and 30s, you know, your hormones, your hormones kind of buffered our mistakes.

[00:04:05] But at midlife, man, the buffer is gone and those hormones will expose you, you know, because recovery slower. You know, stress tolerance is lower. Circadian rhythm is a little bit more fragile. And and that just makes it, you know, so much, so much more difficult.

[00:04:27] And in midlife, you know, a lot of a lot of, you know, midlifers don't realize that they're carrying years of sleep debt. Right. It's not just last night, but they've been sleeping poorly for a long period of time, you know. And so that kind of accumulates on your metabolism. So, you know, sleep is not just rest. It's it's like metabolic recovery.

[00:04:55] So it becomes very, very important after 40. And, you know, I've said it before. When you're in your 20s and 30s, you know, you could, you know, sleep for four hours, go eat some Pop Tarts and go be Superman or Superwoman. Not after 40, not after 40. Absolutely. And so how does poor sleep actually block fat loss? So how does poor sleep actually block fat loss?

[00:05:24] Well, it impacts so many different hormones and systems in your body. So there's research out there that shows that even one poor night of sleep is going to increase insulin resistance by like 20 to 30 percent. Right. It can raise your blood sugar, your fasting blood sugar. It's going to increase your hunger hormones, leptin and ghrelin, and it can increase fat storage for the next day. And that's all for just one day of poor sleep.

[00:05:54] You know, so fat loss requires what we call low insulin windows. And so if insulin is elevated, fat loss never gets released for energy. And that's even if your calories are controlled and your workouts are perfect. And, you know, everyone always comes to me that workouts are right, their calories are correct. And normally they're not. But even if they were, if insulin's elevated, fat loss isn't happening.

[00:06:24] You know, so you got to make sure that that's not elevated because fat loss never gets unlocked. And then no matter, you know, how much or how hard you train, you can't like out exercise sleep chemistry. It's not happening. Absolutely. And stress obviously plays a big role in so many different factors, but especially with weight loss and midlife. So what role does stress actually play here?

[00:06:53] Stress is like a hidden controller for fat loss. You know, between stress and poor sleep, that's going to raise your cortisol levels. And cortisol's job is survival. And when cortisol is high, your body thinks something is wrong. Right. And it thinks it needs fuel available. And that looks very different. It looks the opposite of fat loss. Right. You're going to have higher blood sugar.

[00:07:21] You're going to have fat storage in the abdomen, in that little belly area. And muscle is going to be broken down instead of repair. You know, and that's and that's not a good thing. You know, now you take that from stress and then you stack it with hard workouts. Long work days. Caring for teenagers and parents. Under eating. Emotional stress.

[00:07:50] You know, that's like chronic stress laid on chronic stress. Or I always say stress on stress on stress. That's that's like you're just stacking it all. And when it's like that, it's very, very, very difficult to lose fat. You know, so so you got to manage your stress. I mean, you know, we've been talking about that for quite some time. I you know, it's in my book. I call it the S's sleep and stress.

[00:08:17] If those aren't regulated, it doesn't matter about your diet. It doesn't matter about your exercise. Guys, they play a huge part in fat loss, you know, and the reality is your body doesn't burn fat when it feels threatened. And that's what high cortisol is. It kind of protects it. You know, so stubborn belly fat isn't necessarily like you're doing something wrong or failure. It could be.

[00:08:44] But it also means that you might it might be a stress signal or it might be letting you know that, hey, there's some other things going on here that need to be taken care of. Absolutely. And intense workouts seem to kind of stop working. So why does that happen? Why do intense workouts stop working at midlife? Um, they work at midlife if you recover properly for them. So that's what's not happening. Right.

[00:09:14] And and intensity. Like working out, but intensity is a stressor. So it's a stressor just like anything else, like without going without sleep is a stressor. Right. And so high intensity workouts are a stressor. All of them raise your cortisol levels. Right. And if that happens again, inflammation is going to accumulate. Your appetite hormones are going to spike. Cravings are going to increase.

[00:09:44] Energy is going to crash. And so instead of leaning out, what people get is stubborn, stubborn belly fat. Excuse me. Brain fog. Takes them a long time to recover. Sometimes they have soreness for a long time. And then, um, worst case like burnout, you know, but that's when people are really pushing that high intensity too far.

[00:10:08] But I got to say probably in midlife, I think most people that I see exercising, they're in this category. Right. The intensity is just too high for the recovery. You know? So, so I want to say that again, there's nothing wrong with high intensity periodically sprinkled in the workouts, you know, but what's happening is people are doing it way too often and they are not recovering for it.

[00:10:37] I mean, I've seen client after client, you know, I got a client now to this day and she listens to the podcast. So I'm sure she's going to know that this was her, but I see it all the time. Do I mean, literally she's not an exception, but you know, she came to me, she was doing five days of bootcamp. She was doing high intensity workouts. She was doing strength training. Um, she was very disciplined on the workouts, you know, but you know, she told me she's doing everything right.

[00:11:04] And you know, her body wasn't responding, but the reality was, you know, she was sleeping about five and a half hours. You know, she was working a pretty high stress job. Um, you know, she wasn't doing the recovery, right? So, you know, she was high and low with her blood sugar and she wasn't losing any weight, you know?

[00:11:29] So the first thing we did was first thing I did was convince her, which took a long time to go to three days of exercising, you know, because that's what she could recover for. It was three days. And that took a lot of convincing, but when she did, and then we added in walking and meditation for the stress, um, and then we just prioritize the sleep. You know, it took, it took a while, you know, I give it to her.

[00:11:56] She was very patient once she understood and saw the research and I painted the picture for her. But once we got that sleep up to about seven, seven hours, um, and it took about six, four to six weeks, but her energy improved. The cravings went away and all of a sudden that scale started to move a little bit, you know? So those, those hard workouts weren't helping and everybody seems to think that they do,

[00:12:24] but hard training without sleep, that doesn't build your body. You know, it, it just, um, it really just kind of puts it on the fence. Absolutely. And how does sleep affect muscle? Um, how does sleep affect muscle? Well, you actually don't build muscle in the gym. All right. So that's the first thing people need to understand that you're just damaging it in the gym, right?

[00:12:53] You build it when you sleep, right? That's when the adaptation kind of happens. Now, of course you got to have the right nutrition to go with it, meaning the right protein intake and the carbs to support it. But sleep is the recovery. We always talk about recovery, recovery. People want to do the red light and the compression things and all these other things, but sleep is the ultimate recovery.

[00:13:20] You know, and pull, if you got poor sleep, it's screwing up your growth hormone, right? It's reducing muscle protein synthesis, which is the ability to build muscle. Um, it's lowering your metabolic rate. And so sleep is super important to muscle and your metabolism. And, and, you know, less muscle means, you know, worse blood sugar control.

[00:13:45] If your blood sugar is low or excuse me, if you're, if you have less muscle, your blood sugar is high, which means you're higher insulin levels, which means easier fat storage, you know? So, um, it plays a huge part and it's actually like, you don't build your metabolism in the gym. You don't, you really build it in the bed. And in the gym is where you break it down.

[00:14:12] And then in your recovery or in your sleep is when that adaptation happens. So if you're cutting that part out, your body can't adapt to build the muscle that you're trying to do in the gym. It's just negating all of the efforts that you put in. You're just getting the nice steady or potentially, um, even a decline in your performance and in your metabolism and in your overall goals.

[00:14:40] And I'm sure if you're working out consistently, like you were talking about your client working out five times a week, for example, and you don't see the scale moving and you're getting frustrated and sleep is likely the issue. How can listeners tell that sleep is the bottleneck? I'm sure a lot of people don't know. Yeah, no, um, that's a good question. Some people know because they're waking up between two and four with those racing thoughts. So they know that something, I mean, they don't act on it, unfortunately, but if you're constantly

[00:15:09] up between two and four and you're getting that interrupted sleep for hours, um, that's a problem, right? If you've got afternoon, um, energy crashes. So those people that are running for the second and third cup of coffee in the afternoon, they're hitting the vending machine or going for the candy. You got an issue there.

[00:15:36] If you've got those, um, nighttime carb and sugar cravings, um, that also could be a sign that your sleep is a little bit out of whack. Um, if you're gaining weight and you're consistent with your workouts, you know, like that, there's something going wrong there. Cause if you're consistent with it and you're doing it right, not the high intensity stuff, but you're doing it right, then you shouldn't see a weight gain, you know?

[00:16:03] Um, and if you're feeling wired and exhausted, that's another thing that shows that your sleep is off. That whole wired and tired thing isn't, it's, it's not normal. That's a nervous system issue. Like, like your body sending you a message, um, and most people just ignore it and they turn up the workout intensity, you know, but that's not normal. That's not normal. So those are, those are some of the signs that I would look for.

[00:16:33] And I know, you know, I've been sleep, I've sleep deprived myself quite some time. I mentioned this before. Uh, it wasn't until I wrote my book and did all that research on sleep that I was like, Hey, wait a minute. This is me, you know, brain fog, you know, carb cravings, you know, low energy, high energy. I mean, it was, it read, I read like a book, you know? So it wasn't until I kind of addressed that, that all of a sudden workouts got better and,

[00:17:03] uh, my energy was better. My focus was a lot clearer. So, um, you kind of know, but you got to listen to your body. Absolutely. And what do you think people should do instead? Well, instead of going with the traditional workout diet sleep. Okay. So to speak, you got to flip that all around, right? You really got to flip it. It's got to be sleep has to be first so you can get everything regulated and then you'll

[00:17:31] get your strength training in and then you'll start to see some fat loss, you know? So, so really you got to make the sleep a priority. I mean, because that is what is probably holding you back. And that's, what's going to multiply your actual efforts. And how do you think that people should go about measuring their progress? Um, well, what works?

[00:18:00] Let's talk about what works in midlife first, right? Um, protect your sleep like it's a hair appointment, right? Or like it's a doctor's appointment or a workout. You got to protect it like that, you know? And I say hair appointment because whenever I'm working with a client, if a hair appointment's on the schedule, I get bumped, you know? So there's no interrupting that and nothing's going to come in its way. And that's how you want to protect your sleep.

[00:18:27] You know, you want to strength change two to three times a week, right? You want to walk to keep the stress down and the balance your blood sugar, right? You want to eat protein with every meal. Um, and then you want to reduce that late night stimulation, you know, screen work and alcohol can kind of like screw you up at night because it fragments your sleep and it raises your nighttime cortisol.

[00:18:53] So, you know, not to say that you can't drink, especially to me, because I'm a drinker. I enjoy it. But it's just understanding the trade-off and just being strategic about it, you know? So, but, but the goal is if you're in that ballpark, you got to prioritize sleep and then get that regulation going so that your hormones come into play, then do your strength training a couple of times. And then that fat loss will come.

[00:19:20] I've heard also with sleep and like you said, prioritizing it, is it more so, I mean, obviously the amount of hours matter, but in terms of consistency, like trying to go to sleep at the same time, sort of. Yeah. Yeah. You want to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. Your body likes that rhythm, right? It's called a circadian rhythm for a certain thing, for a certain reason. And you want to make sure that you've got a rhythm to your sleeping and waking as well,

[00:19:49] because that supports it, you know? So, and you also want to make sure you're getting quality sleep, you know, putting that phone down before sleep. I know it's tough and, you know, I don't do it every single night, you know, myself, but that, that helps you to fall asleep earlier and it helps you to wake up feeling better and it helps you to stay asleep, you know? So staying asleep is real important too. That's, I actually, when you said that, I just realized that, cause I know I'm guilty of

[00:20:19] it, I think we are like scrolling and falling asleep and I'll wake up and then my phone is right there and I'll sometimes close it up and scroll again. And I. That's, that's a no, no. That right there is a no, no. And I wake up feeling not great. Of course. Of course. Of course. If you're, if you're waking up in the middle of the night, like I said, that two to four, your mind's racing and this and that, the last, the worst thing you can do is pick up

[00:20:47] that damn phone because now you're just lighting your brain up all over again and it's going to be a battle to get back to sleep. And when you do, it's going to be so short because you got to get up. It's not going to be quality sleep. So, um, so that's not, that's not a good way to go about it. You know, put that thing in the other room and just let it go for an hour before bed and shut it down. And how should people measure progress now?

[00:21:16] Um, one, they should stop looking for scale victories, right? They'll come, but don't, don't lead with that. You know, they want to look for better energy. They want to get better uninterrupted sleep, right? They should have fewer cravings, right? Better mood, focus, energy. And then they should also see improved strength. Like those are the things they should be looking for. And if they get those things, believe me, the scales going to drop.

[00:21:46] But what happens is people look for the scale victory first. They don't see it. And they just start stepping on the gas, which screws up to sleep anyway. So, you know, you got to realize that fat loss is a lagging indicator. You know, it comes after sleep improves, after energy gets stable, after your appetite becomes normal. Then that body composition kind of follows.

[00:22:14] But you can't force fat loss, right? It's allowed. You know, when your body feels safe, supported and recovered, then it'll let go of that fat. Until it does, then it's going to hold on to that stored energy. And so if you've been blaming your workouts, stop. Your body isn't broken. It's just tired. And when sleep improves, fat loss stops being a fight and really becomes a side effect.

[00:22:41] And if this episode hit home, share it with someone who's training hard and getting nowhere. Share it with anyone you think it will resonate with. And there's been another great episode, Doug. It's always a pleasure speaking with you. Another great episode of Midlife Unleashed, where we fix the root, not the routine. And I can't wait to talk to you again sometime soon. I know we have another good episode coming. So everyone, make sure you're following and share this episode. And I'll see you next time. Awesome. Take care.