For the past two mornings, I have "slept in" past my goal of rising at 5 a.m. "Wait, Kerri. Didn't you tell us two days ago ways to wake up early?" Yes, yes I did, but there's a reason for sleeping in!

What's most important to weight loss, diet or exercise? Neither. Sleep is the overall most important aspect to a successful plan!

The night before I woke up at 5 a.m., I had gone to bed at 9:30 p.m.. In other words, I got an acceptable amount of sleep. Then Tuesday night, I didn't fall asleep until 11:35 p.m. according to my FitBit, and the same goes for last night. Now I'll admit, yesterday morning I incoherently made the sleepy decision to go back to bed for two more hours and workout later in the day. But this morning, I did wake up at 5 a.m.. I rolled over the check my sleep record with my FitBit app and realized that I only got 4 hours and 41 min of sleep! Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remembered a tip I had read a long time ago about how sleep aids weight loss, and decided that I hadn't had enough sleep to get up, much less go and exercise yet, so I made the executive decision to get some more rest with intention of researching the topic more today. I am so glad I did!

Did you know?

Poor sleep causes you to store fat.

When your body doesn't get the proper amount of sleep, your insulin levels get disrupted. When insulin levels fall out of whack, your body can't remove the fatty acids and lipids from your bloodstream as well, and they end up getting stored in tissues. You may functioning brain-wise from coffee, but your body could care less about the jolt of caffeine.

Poor sleep will produce more cravings.

Remember that leptin hormone I mentioned yesterday? Well, inadequate sleep can trigger the areas of your brain that make you hungry by decreasing leptin levels. This means you'll go throughout your day feeling hungrier than usual, but it doesn't stop there.

When we don't sleep enough our cortisol levels rise, cortisol being a stress hormone that can leave you wanting food, feeling hungry even if you've just eaten, and can even make you feel dissatisfied after eating a meal. BUT WAIT IT GETS EVEN WORSE.

We all know that when we haven't had enough sleep, our judgement can be a little sketchy. This is because your frontal lobe is not functioning properly! When your frontal lobe is having trouble, your decision making process will most likely suffer. You could find yourself rewarding yourself with high-calorie foods when you haven't even done anything to deserve it. It is crazy the effects not enough sleep has on your body!

Poor sleep decreases muscle retention, muscle recovery, and energy.

If you don't know by now, your body uses sleep to restore your muscles! It does this by releasing growth hormones into your body while you sleep that not only form muscles, but repair them after they've strained through a workout or injury. Not only is this bad, but when you lack sleep, the cortisol your body produces counteracts the growth hormones in your body, hitting you with a double whammy.

Besides how sore you will be since your muscles aren't being repaired properly, I guarantee your gym time will be significantly less effective. You might be saying, "But I have to get up early to go to the gym", but in hind's sight you may just be hindering your success even more. Not only are you causing further damage to your muscles, but the lack of energy you will undoubtedly experience will probably cause you to do 2 sets less of reps, or run a bit slower on the treadmill, or fall asleep on the elliptical (okay maybe not literally, but you get the concept).

Overall, just get a good night's sleep! Your body needs it more than anything, and a good night's rest completely determines your entire day. Go to bed early, minimize distractions, and if you didn't get at least 6 hours of sleep when you wake up, skip the gym for the time-being and go back to sleep. You can always workout later in the day, when you have had enough rest. Just don't be hard on yourself for hitting snooze if you need to. Think of it as taking a giant step towards your goal, and taking proper care of your body.

Information and Research done by me at www.shape.com , WebMD, HealthLine, and NY Post.

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