Pardon My Poppet

I’ve been careful this week.  Very careful!  I’ve watched what I ate, even cutting down to half portions.  I’ve exercised regularly.  I stopped eating after 6 pm (except for a cup of tea and small square of chocolate).  I’ve had people telling me I look like I’ve lost weight (even when I insist I most certainly have not) I got up this morning in the best mood!  Ready to go face that scale once and for all.  And you know what happened?

IT WENT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How is that possible?  I can chalk it up to muscle gain, but you think I would at least see a little move in a positive direction?

The only thing I can think of is that I’m not getting ENOUGH SLEEP.  I’m woken up numerous times a night by a baby who wants to nurse.  Never mind the fact I go to bed WAY later than I should.  I decided to Google it.  Headed over to WebMD and this is what I found:

Could lack of sleep be causing you to gain weight?

Think about it: If you’re feeling sleepy at work, you may be tempted to reach for a cup of coffee (or several cups) and a doughnut for a quick shot of energy.

Well, that one didn’t apply to me, so I kept reading.  I came across this sentence:

 if you are sleep-deprived, meaning that you are not getting enough minutes of sleep or good quality sleep, your metabolism will not function properly,

Well, that sounded more like it.  I read some more.  Apparently there are 2 hormones that regulate appetite as well as our metabolism.  These can malfunction if we are not getting enough sleep.  It is also mentioned that it is not necessarily how long you are in bed “sleeping” but how good your sleep is.  This makes sense.  I may be in bed 9 hours, but after being woken up 4 times and losing 2 hours of sleep in the middle of the night, I constantly wake up EXHAUSTED!

I used to have adrenal fatigue.  Since our adrenal glands rejuvenate between 11pm and 1 am I changed how I sleep.  If I went to bed at 11:30 PM I’d wake up exhausted at 8AM, but if I went to bed at 10PM I would often find myself wide awake and well rested at 5:30 AM.  I think I’ll give going to bed earlier a shot and see if that makes the scale finally budge.  After 4 weeks I feel I’m losing some mojo!

If you have any other suggestions would love to hear them!

Warmest regards,

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