How Does Sleep Affect Fat Loss and Muscle After 40?

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

All of that being said, okay, you're like, yeah, Nikkiey, I suck at sleep. I need to get better at sleep. I need to get out of the story, the excuses or the beliefs I'm telling myself about sleep, and I need to prioritize sleep. Because you could be doing all the other things, right? But this may be the pillar that is going to help you truly get to where you want to be along your fitness journey.

Hey, you guys, what's going on? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong and feel insanely confident.

I'm your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode 196. Today we're going to talk about sleep. I personally think this topic is very often overlooked when it comes to health and fitness and you getting the results you're seeking. Workouts and nutrition are essential. But what if I told you that your sleep could be the missing piece that could be holding you back from achieving fat loss, from achieving muscle growth and from having optimal recovery?

So today, that's what we're going to explore. We're going to explore the power of sleep, how it impacts your entire journey, and how focusing on improving your sleep quality can take you and your results to the next level. First, I want to dive into why sleep is so important, especially when it comes to the goals you're striving to accomplish along your journey, whether that be fat loss or more muscle growth.

Obviously, more muscle growth leads to being more defined, and all the things that embody whatever your goal is. Many of you focus on training harder, being in the gym six days a week, doing X amount of strength training workouts and cardio workouts, and trying to eat cleaner. But what's often overlooked is that sleep is, in my opinion, where the real magic happens. And I say this because I'm a really good sleeper.

So I can confidently get behind this topic and share with you what is going on when your body is in sleep mode, the science behind how sleep affects your fitness and fat loss goals, and so much more. Because I'm a kick-ass sleeper, and I've been told I'm the champion of sleep. I can feel the effects of how it helps me in my day-to-day, but also in the overall results I've achieved in the last eight years.

I can't say I was always a good sleeper. I think it's only in the last five years that I've been really solid at it, also because I've been tracking it consistently for the last five years. I wear the Oura Ring. I'm showing it on video right now. It's the ring I've had on my finger for the last five, six years, before this thing was even cool. It came out and I bought it right away. This is the one fitness accessory I've worn consistently day in, day out, through multiple rings and multiple new charging stations, because this product has evolved over time.

Prior to tracking and paying attention to it and really understanding the science and what's happening when we're asleep and all that jam, I wasn't a good sleeper. Not that I really knew the data behind it, because I wasn't tracking it, but I know that I was constantly stressed, had tons of inflammation going on, wasn't getting the results I wanted, and was groggy the next day.

Personally, from my own journey, I think it was my poor habits with nutrition that led to me not being a good sleeper. When I finally got a grip on my nutrition and consistently followed through with it, and also with moving my body, which I think is really important too, I don't want that to fall to the wayside, things changed. But I say nutrition is king and exercise is queen, in my opinion. When I focused more on eating right, eating enough and the proper breakdown of what my body needed, that drastically helped me improve my sleep for the last six years since I've been tracking it.

The way I can tell the difference, since I wasn't tracking it before and I'm tracking it now, if you're curious, is just the way I feel. So all in all, it's not just about training harder and it's not just about eating cleaner. It's about understanding sleep and how that can be the real magic when you get the right amount of sleep your body needs, getting into REM sleep, getting into deep sleep, all the stages.

If you can truly understand that, and that's what I hope I can give you in this podcast, you'll be able to take what you've learned, implement it into your day-to-day and take sleep a little more seriously. Especially if you're training harder, you're in the gym doing your workouts week to week, you're eating clean and tracking your macros, but you're still not where you want to be with your results. This could be the missing pillar that isn't getting the attention it needs in order to help facilitate your results.

So let's first talk about what's going on in your body when you're in sleep mode. When you sleep, your body isn't just resting. It's also recovering and repairing from the stress you experienced in your day, from the workout you did, from so many aspects of your day-to-day. When you are sleeping, you're not just resting, you're repairing and you're recovering.

Let's talk about some ways your sleep impacts your fitness. One is that when you're sleeping, your body releases growth hormone, and this is super essential for muscle recovery and muscle development. With good, high-quality sleep, your body is able to repair the muscle tissue you've broken down in your workouts more effectively. If you're not getting enough high-quality sleep, your body can't repair that muscle tissue as effectively.

And this can lead to slower muscle development, slower muscle growth, prolonged soreness, not recovering well enough and being inflamed the next day. So one way is that if your sleep isn't good, high-quality sleep, you're not recovering effectively, and your muscle growth and muscle recovery are stunted. That's the word that came to mind there.

The other way has to do with your fat loss goals and how you want to accomplish them. Studies have shown that being sleep deprived negatively impacts the hormones that regulate hunger and fat storage, which are ghrelin and leptin. Maybe you've heard of those two hormones before. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone, and it increases when you're sleep deprived. Leptin signals fullness, and it decreases when you're sleep deprived.

So again: ghrelin, the hunger hormone, is going to increase if you're sleep deprived. And leptin, the hormone that signals fullness, is going to decrease if you're sleep deprived. How that shows up in your day-to-day, in your reality, is that being sleep deprived leads you to overeat. It leads you to have more cravings, and you're going to reach for high-calorie foods, which makes it that much harder to stay on track with your diet.

So fat loss and your hormone balance are stunted. Let's just use that word. Muscle recovery and growth are stunted. Fat loss and hormone balance are stunted. These are the ways that not getting the high-quality sleep your body needs impacts the results you're looking for. And the last thing I'm going to touch on here: have you ever noticed how your workouts suffer after a night of bad sleep?

You've slept poorly, and that lack of sleep directly impacts your energy level. As I was sharing at the beginning, I felt tired and sluggish because I wasn't getting good-quality sleep. Overall, my performance lacked, my focus lacked and my energy levels lacked because I wasn't getting adequate rest. That's going to prevent you, and it prevented me, from being able to push harder in your workouts. And that's going to hinder your progress. Your progress is going to be stunted. So if you're not getting good-quality sleep, you're not going to see the fat loss you want.

You're not going to recover from your workouts well enough to have muscle growth and get that toned look. And you're not going to progress as much because your energy is going to be stunted. All of these aspects are stunted if you're not sleeping well. So think about this for a second. You're training, you're working out, you're eating, you're drinking, you're hydrating, and you're not where you want to be, but you are a poor sleeper.

You're like, I only sleep five hours a night. I can't sleep any more than that. Or, the time doesn't allow. Now, it does. Those are just excuses you're telling yourself. I'm going to get into the practical tips to help you improve your quality of sleep, but I want to put that there for a second so you can start thinking about it and accurately assess yourself. Those are beliefs. Those are stories. Those are excuses you've been telling yourself. Before the practical tips, let me dive into the science behind how sleep affects your fitness and your fat loss.

So we talked about how these results are being affected. But when you're sleep deprived, what's happening at a cellular and scientific level inside your body affects your results. Energy, performance, fat loss, muscle recovery and building more muscle are the surface level, the results level. What's actually going on internally is, one, being sleep deprived increases your body's production of cortisol.

If you don't know what cortisol is, it's the stress hormone. Elevated cortisol levels interfere with your body's ability to repair muscle. They increase fat storage, especially around your midsection, and they lead to chronic inflammation. When you have high cortisol levels, your body prioritizes survival, like, I need to be in survival mode, which often means it's holding on to fat rather than burning it.

So, increased cortisol levels. On that, we just did an awesome community call with Dr. Cabral. He is our favorite functional medicine practitioner. We use his product for all of our new WarriorBabes in their onboarding process, to take a test that goes over their stress, mood and metabolism, so that we can take that insight and develop the best protocol for them nutritionally and fitness-wise, based on that individual's specific results.

The other day, we had him on our community call, specifically about cortisol, because cortisol is one of the levels we test. We test your sex hormones, your cortisol levels, your vitamin D, your insulin and your thyroid. Those are some key elements we need in order to give you the best protocol for your nutrition and your fitness. One of the tests he read back from one of our members inside our community showed what he calls tired and wired. You're supposed to have elevated cortisol in the morning, and it's supposed to level out and dip before you go to bed.

A lot of people in our community are flipped. They have low cortisol levels when they wake up. This could show up as brain fog, low mood, depression, low sex drive, low drive in general, being inflamed and so on. So you're waking up sluggish, and then in the afternoon it starts to peak, and it stays up before you go to bed. That's what he calls tired and wired.

Low cortisol in the morning, high at night. And this can lead to you not getting enough deep sleep and not getting enough recovery, which affects everything I'm talking about here. When your cortisol is elevated, one, you're not getting good sleep, so your results are going to take longer to show because you're not getting enough sleep to repair all of the cellular processes inside your body. But from what I learned from Dr. C on Tuesday, high cortisol levels also start to shut down your thyroid.

And if your thyroid shuts down, it's going to be a lot harder for you to see results, because thyroid is, I believe, alongside your mitochondria and your metabolism, another really important process in your body that helps facilitate results. So all in all, I hope this is landing like, ah, what she's saying is me. And if that's you, it's really important. It's not just, I need to go work out, eat the right macros and stay hydrated. Because probably a lot of you have elevated cortisol levels at nighttime.

You need to focus on bringing that down. And how do you even know you have high cortisol levels? You have to be tested. Now I'm going on a little tangent with cortisol, but what I learned is that the blood work panel you may get from your doctor only gives you the average of your cortisol level in a day. I asked Dr. C about this the other day, because we measure four points of your cortisol throughout the day, since he does it with a saliva test. What you gain from saliva test results, you cannot gain from blood work results in terms of your cortisol.

Blood work is only going to give you an average of your day. It could tell you you're optimal because it's taking the average of the four and giving you a number that falls in the optimal range. But you need to know where your cortisol is in the morning, at lunchtime, around dinnertime and in the evening before you go to bed. Those are the four points measured with this test, and that gives you true insight into your curve. Is your curve flipped? Is it where it needs to be? Then we're able to take that in and assess what we need to do to support you in your fitness journey.

It's not just about training, it's not just about macros and it's not just about hydration. It's also about getting your cortisol levels right so that you can get the right type of sleep: high-quality, efficient, effective sleep, so your body can repair and do all the things it needs to in order to get the results you want. Okay, I could totally expand on cortisol a little more.

Maybe that's an entire episode. I'm going to leave this notepad right in front of me. If you're watching on video, you can probably see me moving it back and forth. But managing your cortisol levels is really important. You won't know unless you get tested, and you can't trust blood work tests. You've got to do a saliva test. And Dr. C is actually coming back on. I'm retesting. We did this before, I don't even know what episode that was. He came on and ran my tests, and we're doing it again. I think it's been about a year since I've tested.

I'm really excited to come back and see where my tests are at now.

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Another thing in terms of the science of how sleep affects your goals is that sleep has a direct effect on your metabolism. Even short-term sleep deprivation can reduce insulin sensitivity, which affects how your body processes glucose. That can lead to weight gain over time and make it harder for you to lose fat, even if your diet and workouts are on point.

Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with the body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you.

At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation.

That's warriorbabe.com/apply. All right, let's get back to the show.

Even if your workouts, your macros, your hydration and all the other aspects of fitness are on point, sleep has a direct effect on your metabolism. If you're sleep deprived, this is all happening internally at a cellular level, and that may lead to the weight gain you're seeing.

It can lead to it over time, and it's going to make it harder for you to reach the goals you want. And as I mentioned earlier, I want to touch on growth hormone again, which is released primarily during sleep, primarily during deep sleep. The recommendation Dr. Cabral gave on the call the other night is that you should be getting 70 to 90 minutes of deep sleep a night and two hours plus of REM sleep a night. I'm filming this five days before its release.

I just shared my Oura stats on my Instagram story this morning, from the Oura Ring I mentioned earlier. I got two hours and 45 minutes of REM sleep last night, and I got an hour and 55 minutes of deep sleep last night. That's why I like to say I'm a sleep champion, okay? Take it from me. All of this stuff is really important to understand, because I feel the positive effects from it afterwards.

My cortisol level slightly increased from the last time we tested. It wasn't that I was high, but it was coming back up, and Dr. C was like, I don't want to see that, I want you to keep going down. So, small tweaks there, and I'll talk about that a little more when I have some takeaways for you. But back to deep sleep: your growth hormone is primarily released in deep sleep.

And that's a key player in muscle recovery and also fat burning. So inadequate sleep means less growth hormone production, which can slow down muscle repair and impact fat metabolism. Okay. So that's a little more of the science: cortisol, which is really important, and how your metabolism is affected through reduced glucose and insulin sensitivity, which over time leads to gaining more weight. Even if everything else is on point, your metabolism is still being affected.

If you're having poor sleep, and growth hormone production already decreases as you age, making sure you get more of it, which you can when you're in deep sleep, is really important for repairing your muscle and burning the fat you want to on your body. So all of that being said, okay, you're like, yeah, Nikkiey, I suck at sleep.

I need to get better at sleep. I need to get out of the story, the excuses or the beliefs I'm telling myself about sleep, and I need to prioritize sleep. Because you could be doing all the other things, right? But this may be the pillar that is going to help you truly get to where you want to be along your fitness journey. I want to give you some practical tips to take away. Number one is what Dr. Cabral shared on our community call the other night, which he calls the 3-2-1 method. Three hours before bed, he says, stop eating. This is if your cortisol levels show you're tired and wired.

So if you have results back showing the curve comes later on, where you wake up with low cortisol, spike midday and are elevated at night, you're tired and wired. You're low in the AM and high at night. So he recommended the 3-2-1 method. Three hours before bed, stop eating. Two hours before bed, no liquids. One hour before bed, no blue light.

Meaning don't look at the TV, don't look at your computer. If you have blue light blockers, put them on. Don't look at your phone. Don't doom scroll in bed right before you're about to fall asleep. That is going to seriously impact your sleep. Anything blue light: staring at the computer, staring at the TV, watching Netflix, staring at your phone, scrolling on your phone in bed. I would ask that you remove all of that. That's the one thing I do every single night. My phone is nowhere near me in my room. Even the rays, whatever they're called, emitted from the phone can affect your sleep.

It's in the other room on the charger for me. So, the 3-2-1. That would be my overall practical tip for you to take away, most importantly if you're tired and wired, with low cortisol in the morning and elevated cortisol at night. Another one is a consistent sleep schedule. I cannot stress this enough. It's really hard, and you have to really police yourself on this: going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. That helps regulate your body's internal clock, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up more naturally.

I think a consistent sleep schedule is so important, second to the 3-2-1. Even if you're not tired and wired and you have a normal cortisol curve, doing this is still really important because it enhances your quality of sleep and makes sure you're spending more time in deep sleep and REM sleep, those restorative stages. Another one is optimizing your sleep environment. For me, my bedroom is my sanctuary.

My bed is probably one of the most expensive items I've invested in, because I know how important sleep is. I have the Sleep Number bed. I forget what level I'm at. I might be at a 10, Sleep Number 10, I can't remember 100%. But you can adjust the firmness so it's exactly how you specifically need to sleep, and they do that in store at Sleep Number, which is incredible. Then I have the Eight Sleep sheet on top of it.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Eight Sleep, but I highly recommend it, because you can do cooling temperatures. For my menopause babes, this one will really help you, because I know you have some night sweats in the middle of the night. You can make your bed really cold before you go to bed, so it's cold when you get in it. Then you can play around with temperatures at different stages of the night, or even put it on autopilot. I think autopilot goes by the temperature outside and then regulates the bed.

You sleep better when you're cold, and that helps you get into different stages of sleep, so you can adjust the temperature for that. And then when you wake up, this might be really hard for some people, but it can be nice and warm. You can set the bed to warm. Or if you like sleeping warm, you can set the bed to warm. I just think it's a dope product. So that's Eight Sleep. And I want to get in touch with those guys, because I firmly believe in that product.

Then on top of the Eight Sleep sheet is a grounding mat. If you know your outlets, the top outlet, or the one singular outlet, grounds down to the ground. You plug the sheet into that, and it's supposed to help ground you while you're sleeping. I'm telling you, my bed is my sanctuary. My room is my sanctuary. My bed is probably one of the most important, most highly invested products I have in my whole space.

Then for me specifically, I keep my room very cool, very dark and very quiet. I have those curtains that block out the light, what are they called, blackout curtains. And I do my best to keep it as quiet as I can, even though I'm on a major highway. So I have an air filter in my room that does white noise.

That's also something that can help, just optimizing your sleep environment. Because limiting light exposure, especially blue light, is key. I don't have a TV in my room, and my phone's not in the room. Limiting that is key to promoting melatonin production, which is a hormone that helps you fall asleep. What's really cool about the Oura Ring, too, is that it shows you latency, so how long it takes you to fall asleep, and the overall efficiency of your sleep.

That little measurement matters. Other things: limiting caffeine intake and limiting alcohol intake. I think that's a given. Both alcohol and caffeine disrupt your sleep cycle and reduce the amount of deep sleep you get. So I would say try to avoid them altogether, or if you can't avoid them altogether, try to avoid them close to bedtime. And then in terms of workouts, guys, it totally depends on where your cortisol is.

From what I learned from Dr. Cabral, if you're tired and wired, maybe some exercise in the evening could actually help you. Whether you work out in the morning or the evening, it's dependent on the individual. And that's what I've said through and through for the last eight years: it totally depends on the individual. Sometimes morning or afternoon exercise can help regulate your sleep, but intense workouts right before bed may have the opposite effect.

But it depends. It totally depends on you as an individual and where you're at in terms of your results from understanding your body internally a little more. So all in all, I think this is really important. Like I said, sleep gets overlooked in this industry and it's not talked about enough, because you could be training really hard. You could be working out five, six days a week. You could be doing all your cardio. You could be going to your classes.

You could be thinking you're stretching and recovering and eating clean. But sleep is where the real magic happens. Your body does so many amazing internal things to help with muscle recovery, to help with growth, to help with fat loss, to balance out your hormones, to give you energy, to help you perform and to help your progress. It is so important. It has a direct tie to your metabolism and to a lot of what you're seeking in the physical aspect of your results.

But internally, a lot of things have to be balanced out, paid attention to, put into a routine and made aware of. All of those things are really important to you getting good, high-quality sleep, so that I can help you get to the results you want. One last thing: consider using a sleep tracker to monitor your sleep patterns, to know how long you're in deep or REM sleep, how long it's taking you to fall asleep, how much you're awake in the night and how much you're actually asleep.

It can give you so many incredible insights into how much sleep you're getting and help you identify areas of improvement. It's incredible to see where your heart rate and your HRV are when you've had a drink of alcohol. Those are other aspects you can track. Your heart rate is surely going to be elevated and your HRV is surely going to be tanked after alcohol. I know that because I've seen it on my tracker and I've seen it on clients' trackers. The deep sleep, the REM sleep, it's all going to be shot to hell.

So I think it's really important to track it, to have the data, to understand it, prioritize it, make it part of your routine, and then listen to your body. Pay attention to how you feel after a good night's sleep versus a poor night's sleep. Notice the difference in your workouts, in your energy levels and in your hunger cues. When you see how much better you perform when you get enough sleep, it becomes easier to prioritize sleep as a key component of your journey.

Okay, so sleep isn't just, I'm going to sleep. It's not a luxury. It's not, I'm just resting. So many things are happening internally. For any of you looking to optimize your fitness goals, your muscle growth and your fat loss, making sleep a priority and following the tips I just touched on is necessary. You'll not only feel better, you're also going to see faster, more sustainable progress along your journey. So please do not take sleep for granted.

Please don't tell yourself you can only sleep five hours, or whatever excuses, stories or beliefs you've been telling yourself. If you're truly dedicated to your fitness journey and you're putting in the work with the workouts, the macros, the hydration, all the things, but you're not where you want to be, I guarantee you should take an accurate look at how you sleep and where sleep falls on your priority meter. If it's on the lower end and you're not getting good sleep, this could be the game changer: putting some things into place to prioritize this aspect of your journey and make it better.

I'd even argue: don't train as much during the week, or don't make macros the sole focus, for a week or two. Focus on sleep, because I think it's important to focus on the one thing you're not doing well at and make it better. You probably already have all the other aspects of your journey nailed down pat. Now make this a priority, and some of the other ones may fall to the wayside just a little bit.

But if you focus on making this one better, you'll have everything you need in alignment: training, macros, hydration, sleep and all the other things that make up a well-rounded fitness journey and lifestyle. All right, guys, I hope you found this valuable and informative. I hope you take away some of these tips, especially if some of what I said resonated with you, and that you make your sleep better. Go make your sleep better. All right, I'll see you next time. Peace out.

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