Health

How a Balanced Diet Relates to a Sound Sleep

After getting a good night’s sleep, everything in life seemingly falls into place. It is easier to get up in the morning, critical thinking isn’t a chore, and your body actually feels limber and ready to move. Surprisingly, getting sufficient rest is about more than just getting eight hours of sleep a night. When your body is working properly, your diet is balanced, and you overall feel good, you naturally fall sleep at healthy intervals. Otherwise, you may not be able to fall asleep easily, you might end up oversleeping all the time, or generally just feel groggy and grumpy. Next up, learn how a balanced diet and sufficient nutrition relates to your sleep schedule.

Your Body Regulates Everything

While people continue to enhance computers, create the next generation of robots, and overall work to improve technology, a lot of them completely forget that the perfect machine already exists; the human body. Your body regulates its own core body temperature, lets you know when it is hungry and gives off error messages when it isn’t operating on a good amount of sleep. Although the human body works better when all conditions are optimal, you can still get it to work well enough when most conditions are adequate. For instance, you can work all day even when you skip a meal or two. Of course, your body will constantly remind you that it needs fuel but it won’t shut down after just a day of inadequate nutrition. Your body can also operate pretty well when it doesn’t have enough rest, but do realize that there are limitations to operating on a lack of sleep. 

What You Eat Impacts How You Snooze

For the most part, people find the most success when they follow predictable patterns and schedules. So, if you are accustomed to eating a diet that contains fiber, fresh vegetables and fruits, lean meats, and healthy fat then you can easily set the hours in which your body goes to rest. However, a marked change in diet will definitely change your mood as well as your sleep schedule. Staying up late at night and eating junk food are unhealthy habits that often end up being paired together. When your body is unable to rest properly, you generally look for ways to lull yourself to sleep. This is sometimes done by attempting to put yourself into a ‘food coma.’ By contrast, if you just aren’t getting enough food altogether because of something like a long-term water fast, you might not sleep very much as your body isn’t expending as much energy on digestion.

Changing Your Diet to Improve Sleep Patterns

Regardless of what or how you are eating regularly, there are more than likely some changes that you can make to help your sleep patterns become better regulated. Do you want to get eight hours of rest every night? Then you have to make a balanced supper and eat it within the same timeframe daily. Want to get up in the morning without effort? A healthy and nutritious breakfast needs to be waiting for you each day. First, consider how many calories you are consuming on a daily basis. Analyze how many of those calories are coming from fat. Take a look at how many grams of protein you are eating, then break down how many servings of fresh fruits and veggies you are eating. By optimizing your diet, your body is better able to regulate itself.

Getting the Nutrition You Need to Get Sufficient Rest

Remember that eating healthy means different things to different people. For example, someone without any serious health conditions can’t eat the same things as someone who is living with stage four kidney failure. Someone following a renal diet will need to limit the amount of protein that they eat, and white bread, sugar, and rice are actually preferred over whole grains. In healthy individuals, phosphorous is used for keeping the body balanced, but a person with kidney failure would need to severely limit their intake. It is suggested that each individual person looks at optimizing their diet for themselves personally. With optimizing diets comes the realization that supplementation is also a very important factor. To learn more about how vitamins and supplements impact your sleep cycle, click the link. Know what proper nutrition consists of for your body and you will be able to sleep when you need to, as well as get as much rest as is necessary.

Eating Better and Resting Soundly

Sometimes people make a change in their lives, getting more exercise and proper rest, and remark on the physical changes they experience. While you may have gotten used to sleeping only four or five hours of sleep regularly, it is not until you start sleeping for a full eight hours that you realize how good it feels to be well rested. Eating well and resting better also means that your digestive system will be functioning at its best. Your thinking is clearer after sleeping the night away, waking up early, and feeling invigorated as you face the day. So, stop making excuses to stick to the lifestyle you are currently leading. Get up earlier in the morning so that you can get more accomplished, and go to bed at a set time and get the amount of rest that you need. If you need more energy throughout the day, look at what you are eating.

If your goal is to improve your performance at work, have more energy so that you can exercise longer, or simply feel better throughout the day, you have to get a solid night’s sleep. No, you won’t always get eight hours of sleep every night, but you should be getting sufficient rest most of the time. So, keep distractions out of the bedroom, ensure that you have a comfortable bed, and set up your nighttime rest routine so that it is easy to follow. To ensure that you have a bed that is as comfortable as possible then you may want to invest in a new mattress. If you live in Brisbane then why don’t you take a look at mattress brisbane to help you on your way to a healthy night’s sleep. On the rare occasion that you even try to stay up later than your regular bedtime,  your body will remind you of what is most important, and that is your rest.

3 Comments

  • Judy Metcalf

    I’ve noticed in myself, that if I eat certain things at the wrong time of evening, I can’t sleep very good. I had to develop a different eating habit in order to get a good nights sleep. Good Article.

  • Lauryn R

    This is such useful information, thank you so much for sharing! When I was younger, and before I had kids, I would stay up super late eating junk food a lot. It caused me to be irritable and just generally tired all of the time. It definitely affects your health and sleep negatively.