Importance of sleep when losing weight I How to get rid of cravings for sugar I Walk & Talk Ep 012
In this Walk‑and‑Talk episode, Eric Roberts argues that sleep is the single most critical, yet often overlooked, factor for achieving any fitness or nutrition goal. He explains that sleeping less than seven hours disrupts two key hunger hormones—leptin (satiety) and ghrelin (appetite)—making you naturally hungrier and more prone to cravings, regardless of diet quality. He then links sleep loss to lower daily energy, which reduces workout frequency and intensity, and to impaired muscle recovery, which limits lean‑mass gains and consequently depresses basal metabolic rate. Roberts also describes how fatigue erodes willpower, leading to poorer food choices, missed meals, and reduced motivation for exercise. Throughout, he acknowledges real‑world barriers (shift work, young children) and urges listeners to prioritize at least seven hours of sleep as a non‑negotiable “bank account” deposit that fuels hormonal balance, metabolism, and mental resilience. The episode ends with a call to action for viewers to comment, like, and subscribe.
Chapters
What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another Walk and Talk with E. I hope you're doing well. It is hot as hell out here. It's like 95 degrees. I'm gonna power through and get this walk talk. I actually don't mind it because I can just walk around without a shirt on and it's really not that bad. Um, oh yeah, so let's have a good day thus far. Um, this walk and talk is gonna be Probably not the most popular walk and talk, but it's probably one of the most important walk and talks. I might switch the way I walk today. I think I'm gonna go take a different route. I'm gonna go to the right today. Yeah, either way, um, this, this walk and talk is me talking about the biggest rock that you're not doing with your fitness nutrition and probably why you're not seeing the results you want to see. It's gonna be sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. We're gonna talk all about sleep in this walk and talk today and why it is so massively important to getting— whether you want to lose fat, build muscle, I don't care what your goal is, but sleep is going to be probably— I would— it's by far top 3. Like, you know, we're going to talk, you know, calories are important, yes, and all these things are important, but sleep— it really comes back to sleep. And it's something that I think especially in the American population, sleep is almost like this— like people wear this like almost badge of honor. Well, I only sleep 4 hours a night, and I got no sleep last night, and I'm still up and going to work and, you know, taking my kids here and there. And it's like, it's amazing, but you do realize how bad that is for you, right? For so many different reasons on so many levels. Well, let's first talk about a hormonal standpoint. Um, when you are sleep deprived— and what is considered sleep deprived is getting anything less than 7 hours of sleep, and that's not my opinion, that's what all of the scientific literature says— when you are sleep deprived, there's 2 main hormones that get affected. There's various different hormones that get affected, but there's 2 main hormones that get affected. Number one is gonna be the hormone leptin, and number two is gonna be the hormone ghrelin. Leptin is the hormone that basically tells your body, hey, I'm good, I'm not hungry, I don't need food, I'm good to go. I don't— you don't need to increase my appetite because I'm not hungry, I'm good. Ghrelin is the hormone that tells your body, hey, I'm hungry, you need to increase my appetite, right? So leptin, ghrelin. When you are sleep deprived, again, less than 7 hours of sleep, your leptin goes down, the hormone that tells your body that you are full and satisfied, and your ghrelin, the hormone that tells your body you're hungry, increases. So automatically you are putting yourself behind The 8-ball, so to speak, especially if your goal is fat loss. If your goal is fat loss and you are sleep deprived, getting less than 7 hours of sleep per night, you're automatically going to be hungrier. I don't care how many calories you eat. I don't care how many vegetables and protein. And yes, like I did a walk and talk on how to stay full during your calorie deficit. Yes, do all those things I said in that walk and talk. But point being, you could still do all those things, and since you're sleep deprived, your body is going to tell your brain, hey, I'm hungry, increase my appetite. That's what happens. So you're already putting yourself behind the 8-ball that much more, and you're making this calorie deficit, this weight loss journey you're trying to be on, that much harder because you're automatically going to be hungrier. I don't care what else you do. So if you're hungrier, what happens? You're probably going to not stick to your diet as well. You're probably going to have more cravings. You're probably going to, you know, have bigger portion sizes. That's going to be harder to stay within your overall calorie limit for the day. And this is where people say, oh, I can't lose weight because I can't sleep. Yes and no. Like, no, because it all comes back to energy in versus energy out. Like, If you were in a calorie deficit but sleeping 2 hours a night, you would still lose body fat. It'd be incredibly difficult, but you'd still lose body fat. But it's what happens after you don't get adequate sleep that causes you not to be in this negative energy balance equation, that causes you not to be in a calorie deficit. It's not inherently the sleep. It's that because you're not sleeping as well, you're more hungry, so you have more cravings, so you eat more calories, so You know, also we can talk about just from an energy standpoint, you're gonna have lower energy. I can't tell you how many of my clients come to me and they're like, yeah, I sleep 5 hours a night and I'm tired. I don't wanna go work out. I'm like, I wouldn't wanna fucking get out of bed at 5 hours of sleep, let alone go work out. Like, yeah, I can understand. And so, you know, you're gonna have less energy to go work out. Less energy to go work out, probably now not only are you increasing the calories you're eating 'cause you're hungrier, More cravings, but you're also decreasing the energy you put out, 'cause you might be skipping workouts or not getting on walks and, you know, so on and so forth. So this, you're making the calorie balance equation that much harder on yourself by not getting adequate sleep. So that's number one. Number 2, we can talk about metabolism, especially if you are working out. Your body builds the most muscle When you're sleeping, the most lean muscle mass, and it recovers lean muscle mass when you're sleeping because that's when your body's not in fight-or-flight mode. By the way, I probably should shave, but whatever. Um, that's when your body's not in fight-or-flight mode, so that's when it recovers. But if you're not sleeping adequately, it's gonna be very hard to build muscle, build lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have on your body, guess what? The higher your metabolism is. This is because the more lean muscle mass, the more lean muscle mass requires more oxygen to get pumped to it. So the more lean muscle mass you have, this is why you— like, for example, myself. Yes, I'm 6'4 and I'm 25 and a male, whatever, but over the past 9 years I've been training to build muscle. So my metabolism is going to be a bit higher than somebody who has not been training to build muscle For the past 9 years, 'cause I have a higher lean muscle mass, right? So lean muscle mass is going to help boost your metabolism. Now, if you're not sleeping, you can't build that lean muscle mass. What was that? You can't build that lean muscle mass, and then from there, you're gonna have a lower metabolism 'cause you can't build the lean muscle mass, right? So that's number 2. You're automatically, again, putting yourself behind the 8-ball that much more when it comes to I don't care what your goal is, whether it's fat loss or muscle building, both those things are going to be incredibly more difficult with less than 7 hours of sleep per night. And by the way, I get it. Some people might not be able to get that, like whether you're a shift worker or you have young kids and you can't sleep throughout the night, whatever it is, I get it. But point being, try as best as you can to do as best as you can. So that's number 2. Number 3, we can talk about Willpower just in general. Again, the more I go this way, the more you the less you sleep, the less willpower you're gonna have. Let's be honest. Let's just call it how it is. You're gonna be tired. You're gonna be hungry. There's gonna be less willpower to stick to your deficit, to not go grab this thing at night when you're probably not even really hungry, but like you're bored or whatever, so on and so forth. Or you know, hey, I have my food. You know. The classic mom thing. I'm like, Mom, can we go get, uh, you know, can we go get some food? No, we have food in the house. I'm like, shit, fine. So it's like, but you know, when you're hungry and less willpower, you might be more inclined to go out to eat because, you know what, I don't, I don't feel like cooking, or I don't feel like doing this, I don't feel like doing that. Which again, you're putting yourself behind the 8-ball that much more because it's going to make it that much more difficult for you to stick to your calorie deficit, for example. 'Cause your willpower's lacking 'cause you're tired, and so you're gonna eat this, or you're gonna eat that, or you're not gonna cook dinner, or you're not gonna cook these vegetables, or you're not gonna meal prep, or you're not gonna go get up and work out. You don't have the willpower 'cause you're fucking tired. Not only energy, but willpower. We only have so much mental capacity to put towards things during a day, and it's not just fucking fitness and nutrition. Like, your life is more than just fitness and nutrition. You do understand that, right? Yeah. You have whether it's your spouse or your kids or your job or your friends or whatever the case may be. You have other things going on. The fucking global pandemic. There's so many things going on. So you have to be able to realize that allocating willpower towards things, it's not just fitness nutrition. So you have to be aware of that because the less sleep you get, it's almost like your bank account. The less sleep you get, the the lower your bank account is. The lower your bank account is, the less you can put money towards things, right? The higher your bank account is, the more you can put money towards things. When you sleep, you fill up this bank account. But if you're sleep deprived, again, you're gonna be— you're gonna— it's like if you don't have the money for something. You want it, you want to lose weight, or you want to lose fat, or you want to build muscle, but you don't have the things to get it. You don't, you don't have the, the currency In the bank. You don't have enough, enough, uh, willpower, uh, hunger, uh, being full, proper hormonal profile, good metabolism, whatever it is. You don't have those things in the bank. So you can't just take out a loan for fat loss because it's not how it works, or a lot of people would be doing that, I'm sure. So sleep, it's very important. I could go on and on about sleep, but those are the main things. Remember, leptin and ghrelin, the hormonal profile. And again, I didn't even mention talking about like testosterone, for example, and, you know, building muscle. Like, you know, it's— there's so many other things that get affected from sleep, but the main things are leptin and ghrelin. You're gonna have less willpower. You're going to put yourself behind the 8-ball that much more. You're gonna be more hungry. You're gonna have less energy. You're probably gonna get less steps throughout the day, less workouts throughout the day. That's gonna make this calorie balance equation that much harder for you. 'Cause again, that's what it comes back to is a calorie balance equation. So it's making this calorie balance equation— a lot of cicadas over here— making that calorie balance equation harder. And that's why you won't be able to see results. It's not inherently from the sleep, it's what happens after you get the lack of sleep that makes it that much harder on you. So that's my 2 cents on this walk and talk. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you found it informative. If you did, feel free to drop a comment, like the video, subscribe to the channel, and we'll talk soon. Okay? Bye.
