I’ve never been much of a night owl. Even as a child, I preferred to go to bed early. But for years, I stayed up super late to get work done, finish household chores, zone out in front of the TV, or spend time with my then-husband after the kids went to bed.
This was also the time I started to gain a lot of weight—75 lbs of extra weight, not post-baby weight. I was the lightest weight ever after having my second son, but then, between my responsibilities at work and home, my behaviors and habits led me to gain a lot of weight quickly.
It took me a while to realize there was a strong connection between how I spent my evenings and my weight gain. Once I changed my evenings and implemented a simple routine, I started to see weight loss results.
There’s a lot of power in how you spend your evenings that can impact your life, and if you’re trying to lose weight, this might be the most impactful area to focus on to see results! Let’s dive into this connection between your evening routine and weight gain. I’ll explain how your evenings set the tone for sleep quality, metabolism, and behaviors that evening and the following day.
Let’s start by discussing the impact on both sleep quantity & quality. If you’re scrolling Instagram or binging Netflix right before bed, you’re setting yourself up for a poor night of sleep. All the blue light emitted by screens suppresses melatonin production, a hormone that helps regulate sleep. Lower melatonin levels make it harder to fall asleep. Screen time reduces the quality of your sleep by increasing the time it takes to fall asleep, referred to as sleep onset latency, leading to shorter sleep duration. Exposure to blue light also confuses your circadian rhythm, which is your body’s internal clock signaling daytime and delaying sleep. Screens right before bed can lead to more fragmented and less restorative sleep, causing you to wake up feeling tired and unrefreshed. Screens right before bed also cause you to have an emotional response from the mental stimulation. Ever watch a triggering show and then find yourself wide awake and trying to process what you just watched? Increased alertness and an emotional response (stress, excitement, anxiety) from what you watched can keep you up and make it harder to fall asleep. Prolonged screen use can cause eye strain and headaches, making relaxing and falling asleep harder. To summarize, screens right before bed are a terrible idea!
Poor sleep can impact weight gain through hormonal imbalances, increased appetite and cravings, and reduced physical activity the following day. When your sleep quality suffers, leptin (the hormone that signals fullness) decreases, and ghrelin (which signals satisfaction) increases. This hormonal imbalance leads to making less-than-optimal food choices the next day. It’s much harder to willpower through food choices than your hormones are all thrown off like this! Poor sleep can also elevate cortisol levels, a stress hormone leading to fat storage, particularly around the abdomen. Say hello to perimenopausal belly fat! Sleep deprivation often impacts our decision-making and leads to increased cravings for sugary, fatty, and high-calorie foods. Has anyone else found themselves craving something sweet even after you’ve eaten a filling meal??
Poor sleep can disrupt your regular eating patterns and lead to late-night snacking. It’s just a matter of time when you’re up later that you find yourself wandering over to the pantry and staring at the options. Even if you’re full, you may find yourself craving a snack, which leads to more snacks, and suddenly, you’re consistently doing this each night and have made it a habit. People who stay up late typically end up consuming more late-night mindless snacks. Watching TV or using a phone/tablet in bed can lead to mindless snacking, which not only adds extra calories but can also cause discomfort and indigestion, further disrupting sleep.
So it’s clear that poor or insufficient sleep impacts our nutrition but also affects our overall activity. It’s much harder to get out of bed in the morning to work out or get your steps in when you have not slept well. If you’re staying up late, waking up late, and hitting snooze a few times, it’s unlikely you’ve left much time for physical activity before work. And then you’ll be so exhausted after work that it’s unlikely to happen then, either!
I know how frustrating it can be to struggle to get a good night’s sleep. If this is you, let’s focus first on your evening routine and what you can control rather than dwell on the parts you can’t.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself about the pieces you can control:
- Are you putting your phone, laptop, and other screens away at least 30 minutes before bed, if not longer?
- Is your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet to support sleep?
- Are you doing anything to unwind and relax for a few minutes before your head hits the pillow?
- Do you have ways to support your body to regulate stress that doesn’t involve coping strategies involving food and booze?
Putting a simple evening routine in place can significantly affect your sleep, metabolism, and behaviors and directly impact your weight management. The answer is to put in place a simple evening routine. I’m not talking about a long, lengthy beauty and self-care ritual since most busy women like myself don’t have time for this! But a simple evening routine that gives you time away from screens to decompress, relax, and get to bed at a decent hour will impact your weight management. Anyone struggling with their weight should start by evaluating how they spend their evenings.
And if you need help figuring out where to start or how to do this, join my group program Unclutter Your Life, where I’ll help you build a personal evening routine that promotes better sleep and healthier choices.
Early bird pricing ends on Monday! So lock in your discounted price now while it’s still available.
