JJ Virgin explains why 7-9 hours of sleep matters: less than that tanks your metabolism and cranks up sugar cravings, even with a good diet and exercise. Her husband slept 5-6 hours, struggled with weight, then moved to 8-9 hours and lost weight. Deep sleep releases growth hormone, which your body needs to repair tissue and build muscle at night.
Guess what? You can be eating clean, you can be working out hard, but if you're short on sleep, your metabolism, like, literally could be running at half speed. Even if you're eating right and exercising, failure to get the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep was setting you up for obesity. I saw this in my husband when I met him early on in our relationship. It came out that he slept about 5 to 6 hours a night. I was like, oh, this isn't gonna work. And he also really loved his sugar. And literally my big focus, one of the biggest first focuses was you gotta sleep. And moved him from 5 to 6 hours to 8 to 9 hours. And at that point, I was having trouble keeping weight on him. He stopped craving sugar and everything evened out. And now on the longevity side of things, here's the other thing going on with sleep. This is when you release your growth hormone, your repair and recovery hormone. Most of it's released in the first few hours of deep sleep. And when you cut that short, guess what? You're basically shrinking your nightly repair system, right? Now it's gonna be even harder for you to build muscle, to maintain lean muscle. So you gotta have that growth hormone effect from good sleep.
