Good morning. Day 11.
We covered sleep on Day 3. I am coming back to it because it is the most underestimated lever in this whole challenge.
Two hormones decide how hungry you wake up.
Leptin tells your brain you are full. Ghrelin tells your brain you need to eat.
Sleep less than seven hours and leptin drops while ghrelin rises. You wake up hungrier than you should be, with stronger cravings for sugar and carbohydrates, before you have made a single decision. That is not weak willpower at 3 PM. That is a hormone shift that happened while you were asleep.
There is a second thing almost nobody mentions. Chronic short sleep shifts your gut bacteria. The strains associated with a leaner body composition decrease. The ones associated with fat storage increase.
Your gut, your hunger, and your sleep are running on one system.
The overnight window works only if:
You are asleep between 10:00 and 10:30 PM
The room is dark, because light suppresses melatonin
Your last meal was at least two hours before bed
You are not scrolling in bed, because blue light delays melatonin by around 90 minutes
Tonight's action:
Blue light off by 9:30. Phone face down, out of reach. In bed by 10:15.
One night. See what tomorrow feels like.
Yours in health,
Dr. Shallanda Hunter, PharmD, MBA, CFNMP
Hunter's Holistic Health
huntersholistichealth.com
For educational purposes only. Not medical advice.