How to Sleep Well AND Lose Weight the Natural Way

January has blown into the Susquehanna Valley with blustery winds and snow and that’s just fine with me! January also means that many of us are resetting our minds and spirits for 2025 with fresh, new wellness goals. Whether or not you set resolutions, many of us look to the beginning of a new year to start new beginnings and for a lot of us, getting more sleep and losing weight the right way are top of mind.

So, how do you do that anyway? We have a few ideas.

Sleep and Weight are Connected

It’s true. When your sleep is off, your weight is off. As frustrating as it is, it’s a biological fact that when we lose sleep, losing weight or even maintaining a healthy weight is very difficult.

Sleep is something humans have evolved to do in order to regenerate and heal. When our bodies do not get enough sleep, our entire system doesn’t operate well. In fact, sleep deprivation is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease to include hypertension, and even premature death.

The current research shows that optimal sleep every night for adults 18-60 years old is 7-9 hours of sleep. Previous to screens and artificial lighting in our lives, or what is better known as the age of “social jet lag”, adults in the 1910s were getting about 9 hours a night. Today? We get less than 7 hours, if we’re lucky. In fact, many adults report less than 6 hours of sleep a night as their “normal.”

When you don’t get enough sleep, your body craves more energy – or food – to function, instead of using the fat and calories that you already have stored in your body. Lack of energy means that we’re snacking more, increasing our meals, eating more high-calorie foods at night time or in the middle of the night. Most of this snacking doesn’t include whole foods like fruits and vegetables, but rather fast foods and simple sugars and fats, resulting in an overall higher energy intake and higher weight.

Lack of a good 7+ hours of sleep a night also impacts our hormones, which increases our brain’s desire to eat. Our appetite hormone, ghrelin, is what makes our stomach growl when we’re hungry. And, our hormone leptin, which is made by our fat cells, lowers our appetite. When you don’t get enough sleep, ghrelin is increased and leptin in decreased, creating the perfect storm for our brain to tell you you’re hungry and to go and get a snack – even if it’s 3am. And, fighting that urge can be really, really hard.

So what can you do?

First, Retrain Your Circadian Rhythm

Circadian rhythm is your body’s internal clock. “Circadian” in Latin means “around or approximately” (circa) “a day” (diem). This clock exists in our brain and a few other places in our body and tells us when we’re ready to sleep and is triggered by earthly cues such as sunrise and sunset. Daylight tells our clock to feel awake; darkness tells our clock to feel drowsy.

This internal clock is located in a tiny cluster of cells known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is in your hypothalamus. Throughout the day, the SCN sends signals to control the activity throughout your body and is highly sensitive to light or the absence of light.

A few things that get your circadian rhythm off it’s natural balance are:

Screens late into the evening when it’s dark outside and engaging with artificial light well past when you feel tired (binging watching, video games, laptops and cell phones, to name a few).
Eating too close to bedtime, which triggers your body to start it’s energy production and digestion production instead of its sleep production.
Some medications
Overnight shifts
Travel
Temperature

To retrain your circadian rhythm, first take a good inventory of your daytime and nighttime habits and switch those around to tell your brain when to power down. Here are a few ways you can do that:

Stop drinking caffeine past noon or 2pm every day. Caffeine stays in our body quite a long time and even if our bodies are “used to it” at 11pm, what’s really going on is that we’ve just trained our body to accept a stimulant as its normal course of function right before sleep. Most often, this does not pan out for our brain and many of our other organs as caffeine is not only a stimulant for our brain, it tends to dry out our body during a time when our body is trying to heal. This may impact sleep over the long haul, even if one doesn’t feel the impact right away.
Avoid alcohol, narcotics and street drugs as much as possible and especially close to bedtime. New cancer research on alcohol’s role in the 7 most common cancers in the U.S. (breast [in women], colorectum, esophagus, voice box, liver, mouth, and throat), prompted the Surgeon General to issue a new warning and may prompt new cancer warnings on alcohol bottle labels in the near future. As for sleep, alcohol and narcotics overstimulate our brains and dramatically impact both our ability to fall asleep and our ability to stay asleep.
Keep to a regular 24-hour schedule that includes moderate exercise and avoids late day or evening naps.
Go outside when it’s daylight to boost your brain’s sense of wakefulness.
Set a timer for your screens so that they automatically shut off at a certain time every day – and then the hard part! – try to keep them off. Instead, opt for a low-activity craft, read a book, take a warm shower or do other restful things at least 2 hours before bed.
End dinner time around 7pm at the latest and avoid snacking in the evening. Not only will this help your energy to wind down, it will help you from getting up to use the bathroom throughout the night, which interrupts sleep.

Next, Think About Adding a Sleep Supplement

Have you tried all these ideas and more and are still struggling? Natural sleep supplements are a great way to help retrain our brains into powering down.

I’m sure a lot of you have already heard of melatonin and while it’s great for a lot of folks, it can have a few unwanted side effects, mainly a feeling of being hungover and weird dreams (I’ve had those dreams and no thank you!). Melatonin is not an herbal supplement, it is a hormone in the form of tablets, powders, gummies, etc. We make melatonin in our bodies naturally and over-the-counter melatonin adds to what our body already produces, which can increase our drowsiness and induce sleep.

I tend to recommend that people who struggle with sleep start with an herbal supplement or remedy first. Here are a few herbs that help aid with sleep:

Valerian
Passionflower
Lavender
Chamomile
Hops
Lemon balm
Ashwagandha
Milky oats
Skullcap

At Wholly Holistic, we sell most of these herbs in bulk so that you can make your own teas and tinctures. We also have these and other herbs already mixed in a capsule and tincture for you. Plus, we have dedicated staff on hand to help you determine which of these are the best for you and your needs.

Now That You’re Sleeping, Let’s Talk Natural Weight Management

There are a TON of books, social media accounts, websites and companies out there trying to tell you that their weight loss program is THE ONE and that it beats all the others. They claim to have all of the answers. And I wish they did. But, if you’re here and reading this, you know as well as I do that most of them do not have the answers.

There are a lot of things you can do to lose weight and keep it off the natural way. Let’s explore a few.

Add Fiber and Take Care of Your Gut

Your gut controls so many things in your body and one of them is weight. If your gut isn’t functioning properly, you bloat up, retain water, you don’t poop and you generally don’t feel great. You’ll also hold onto toxins and for this and a lot of other reasons, losing weight will be really hard.

A simple fix to keeping your gut and your microbiome (your gut’s beautiful bacteria) healthy is to add fiber to your diet. You can do this a few different ways.

Eat whole grains. Add oatmeal, barley, farrow and whole wheat bread to your menu.
Eat whole fruits and veggies. Try plant-based sheet pan recipes like these from PlantYou.
Add Psyllium husks to your diet. Psyllium husks look like a simple fine grain and come from the shrub-like herb called Plantago ovata, or more commonly known as plantain. Mix a little in your juice to get gentle and natural relief to constipation and diarrhea as well as to maintain your blood sugar levels and boost heart health.

Add These Herbs to Your Diet

There is a lot of research out there on how adding in certain herbs will help you to keep your weight in check and overall, to feel healthy. Here are a few. Stop in to see us at Wholly Holistic and stock up on these herbs today.

Turmeric or curcumin. The active ingredient in turmeric that may help with weight loss is curcumin. Because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, turmeric may help reduce water retention in your body and help aid in keeping your weight managed.
Dandelion. All parts of dandelion plants can be consumed and can be a healthy way to add a weight-reducing plant into your diet. Research so far on dandelions point to their polyphenols as to why they help maintain and reduce weight. Dandelion roots are an excellent form of fiber and help aid in digestion, both of which can help in weight management.
Burdock root. For similar reasons as dandelion root, burdock root (which tastes kind of like a nutty carrot) is an excellent source of fiber and can help with digestion, which helps to make it a good add to your diet.

Consider Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is time-restricted eating or, where you eat in a shortened time window each day, without necessarily trying to cut calories. For many people, the simple act of reducing their window of time to eat every day, naturally reduces the number of calories they consume and they lose weight slowly over time.

There is a lot of great research out there that points to intermittent fasting’s reduction on inflammation, improvement on Type 2 Diabetes, heart health and weight loss.

There are several options to get started:

The 16/8 method: An 8-hour eating period and a 16-hour fasting period. The simplest way to start this method is to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner within an 8-hour period and nothing else for the day.
Eat-stop-eat: This involves fasting for 24 hours once or twice per week and is a more advanced form of fasting. You might try the 16/8 method for a month or two before starting this method.
The 5:2 diet: With this method, you consume only 500–600 calories on two nonconsecutive days of the week but eat as usual the other 5 days.

Keep in mind that fasting is not for everyone. Anyone with a current or former history of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, pica, rumination disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder should avoid intermittent fasting.

When you start your fasting routine, be sure to have plenty of healthy, high-protein and fiber meals to reduce any low-sugar impacts like feeling light-headed or feeling irritable, which are two of the most commonly reported side effects when you start out.

What’s Next?

Ready to start? Come to the shop today to take advantage of our January Health Coaching deals! At Wholly Holistic, we can work with you to meet your health goals. Stop in, call or message us today to ask all your questions and to schedule a health coaching appointment with one of our certified practitioners.

See you at the shop!