How Sleep Affects Muscle Gain and Fat Loss After 40

Nikkiey: Don't turn the lights on, because as soon as you turn on a bright light, it's signaling, oh, it's time to wake up.

What's up, you guys? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder and brand personality of WarriorBabe, where we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 25, where we're going to deep dive into talking about sleep.

Yes, sleep. Are you guys feeling refreshed from the weekend? Are you guys caught up on your sleep? Are you feeling like zombies walking into this Monday? I'm going to help you understand why you may be feeling like that zombie. All right, so I'm going to help you guys understand how to optimize your sleep for faster muscle gain, for fat loss, and just for your overall freaking well-being. Sleep is so important, and I don't think it gets talked about enough in the fitness space.

So, y'all, I challenge you. Just going to kick it off right now. I challenge you, and I want you all to accept this challenge for this week, or whenever you're listening to this podcast. This is going live on a Monday. But I want you to put this focal point on sleep for some time. Okay, for some time. I want you to focus on better quality sleep. I want you to incorporate this into your routine now. Starting tonight. Okay, but seriously, there's no better time than now to start working on this and embedding this type of habit into your lifestyle.

All right? And I know, I'm aware that many of you guys have busy lifestyles. You have busy schedules. But I encourage you to aim for at least seven hours. Maybe eight. Seven to eight hours of sleep a night. And guys, this means not watching Netflix before bed so that you can dedicate the extra 45 minutes to one hour for sleep. If that's all it takes, if all this means is you're going to get an extra hour of sleep because you're going to stop watching Netflix before bed, then do it. I challenge you.

And if you guys are listening to this podcast, I like the challengers that want to be challenged. Because I'm challenging you right now to do it. And by the end of this podcast today, you guys, you're going to have three ways you can start optimizing your sleep better. Tonight, literally. You know what I'm all about. You guys listen to this podcast, you take what I'm saying, and you put it into action. So by the end of this podcast, you're going to have three ways that you can start today, tonight, optimizing your sleep.

I'm going to dive into this, but it's so important having good quality sleep when you are trying to build muscle and you are trying to lose weight, you're trying to lose fat. Okay. Because it's so crazy, y'all, to know this, but the majority of this world is pretty good at getting poor sleep and getting by with some caffeine or some energy drinks or some pre-workout. Knocking it back. Knocking the coffees back. Oh, I need a coffee. Getting an energy drink. Knocking energy drinks back. Before you go to work out, knocking some pre-workout. That dry scoop shit. I don't know how people do that.

And the crazy thing is that you guys can do all of the things that you need to do with those outside sources of caffeine, despite the fact that you get poor sleep. You can get by. You can chug the caffeine. You can chug the energy drinks. You can chug the pre-workout. And you can get by. And this makes you think that you are doing okay. But this could not be any further from the truth. Any further from the truth.

There was a study that I read up on previously where researchers compared individuals who slept five and a half hours a night to those who slept eight and a half hours a night. So guys, that's a three-hour difference. The five-and-a-half-hour night sleepers had 60% less muscle mass at the end of the study than those who slept eight and a half hours a night, who had 40% more muscle mass. Holy shit balls. That is a huge difference. The people who slept five and a half hours a night had 60% less muscle mass at the end of the study than those who slept eight and a half hours a night, who had 40% more muscle mass at the end of the study. That is a massive difference.

Guys, understand this. Please. If there's anything that you guys gain from this podcast, it's going to be this, plus the three things that you're going to be able to take away today and start implementing right away. Lack of sleep is like sending a loud-ass stress signal to your body. It is telling the body that things are not good. When you have poor sleep, this is what it starts to communicate to your body: we need to slow down the metabolism to store energy. We need to ramp up the appetite so that you can get more energy. And we cannot put on or build lots of muscle, because muscle is energy expensive. It burns a lot of energy.

You guys know from previous podcasts, I've talked about how the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you're burning, because of the energy that those muscles need and store. So they burn more energy. They burn more calories. So your body literally turns into this conserve-energy mode. Slow down the metabolism to store more. Ramp up your appetite so that you will feel hungry, so that you can get more energy from food. And don't build lots of energy-expensive tissue like muscle, which is the main thing that you guys all want to do, right? But if you're getting poor sleep, this shit ain't happening.

So many people do not realize this. They don't realize what is going on internally. They don't realize truly how important sleep is. If you are trying to burn body fat, if you are trying to get more muscle and build more muscle, which is what gets you toned, you guys. That's what toned means. Having more muscle on your body. It's just decreasing the body fat around the muscle to show more definition. That's what toned is. But if you're getting poor sleep, you are probably going to progress at 50% of your true potential. I'm not kidding. If you are trying to burn body fat, you are trying to get more muscle because that's what's going to make you look more toned and more defined, but you're getting poor sleep, you're probably only going to progress at 50% of your true potential.

Guys, on top of this too, poor sleep accumulates stress. All stress accumulates, you guys. Work stress, home stress, lack-of-sleep stress, and exercise is a type of stress to the body. It all accumulates in your body. And if there's too much of it, then your body just won't adapt and it will not progress. It goes on the defense. It works against you, not with you. When cortisol is elevated, it's a fat-storing hormone. People store more around their love handles, around their stomach, because people are chronically stressed. And on top of it, they're not getting enough sleep.

So at this point, your body will not adapt. It will not progress. It goes on the defense and it's going to work against you instead of with you. So if you want your workouts, if you want your food, if you want anything goal-related here to respond the way that you want it to, you can't do it with little stress reserves left. Because anything that adds more stress to your body will just tip you over. And at that point, you're screwed. This could be a reason why you're not getting the results that you want.

And guess what? The thing that will tip you over, poor sleep does that. If you're already stressed, if you have all of these things going on, work stress, home stress, exercise stress, life stress, and your stress reserves are already so low, and then you add more stress, it's just going to tip you over. And at that point, you're not going to get the results that you want. And poor sleep will do that.

So many people, like I mentioned before, think that they can get by with two less hours of sleep a night. And it's a chronic thing. But people don't realize the profound impact it has on your health, on your performance, and on your results. Even other health-related things like inflammation, feeling achy, having sore joints, your immune system gets lower, you have insane mental fog, because you're getting poor quality sleep. Guys, is this all making sense? I hope it is. Because I just want to stress how important sleep is before I dive into these three things that you're going to be able to take away, so that you feel more empowered. Because I'm sure you're feeling all the things that I just addressed. I'm sure at some point you've noticed that you get poor sleep. Or you're only sleeping five hours and you wake up feeling like a zombie the next day.

Hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to this show. It means a lot. I hope you guys are enjoying it, and there's so much more to come with it. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons. And also, it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too. Thanks so much, guys. Let's get back to the show.

And here's the thing too, you guys, before I dive into these three things really quick. Coaches coach nutrition and coaches coach workouts. But barely anyone coaches sleep. A lot of people in this industry ignore coaching the sleep part. It's something that we adamantly help our WarriorBabes do. It's currently a part of our 80-day habit-stacking challenge with our VIPs. So if you guys want to learn more about WarriorBabe, the link is in the description beneath this podcast. We'll help coach you on sleep. We'll help make sure that you're learning how to embed this habit into your lifestyle.

Okay, so let's dive into these three things. If you guys can follow along with this and you implement this, you can get better results with fat loss and building muscle. I literally promise you that. I am an avid eight-hour, eight-and-a-half-hour sleeper a night. I just have to be. Or else I feel all of the things I've already touched on. All right? And these are three things I incorporate into my daily routine as well to help me get better quality sleep. So these aren't just three random things that I'm throwing out there. These are actually things that I have in my routine, in my habits, that I do every single night.

All right? So number one: stop artificial light at least an hour to two hours before bed. Artificial lights like electronics, your phone, bright, cold home lights keep your eyes thinking that the sun is still up and that it's still bright as day. And your brain takes a few hours before sleep to get into the right rhythm of all of the sleep stages that you have to go through. You can't expect to be on your phone or around bright electronic lights or even the cold lights, and I'm going to give you guys a little tip that you can do with the cold lights, but you can't expect to be in all of those bright lights, turn them off, hit the pillow, and go right into excellent sleep. It's like a shock, going from light to dark and trying to sleep. It's not going to happen, you guys.

And if you are somebody who just crashes regardless of what I'm saying here, like you can go from light to dark, that's a sign that you're still not getting good quality sleep on previous nights. So if you can just crash, it doesn't mean that you're actually getting quality sleep.

Another thing that I do is I have my Oura Ring and I track my sleep every single night, so I can see and understand my sleep patterns. And I understand, maybe this is what I did the night before and why I didn't get a good night's sleep. Or I know when my period's coming, and I can tell when I don't get a good quality night's sleep, because my body temperature gets elevated and my heart rate gets elevated. So an Oura Ring is so dope. Highly recommend.

So if you guys can turn off the TV, read before bed, which helps with your REM sleep, turn off the bright cold lights in your house and operate with candlelight, or those Himalayan salt lamps are dope, because they have a lower amber glow. Those things really help. Or I personally have Philips Hue lights. So if you guys have an Alexa, you guys can get these Philips Hue lights, which I set to a warm, almost orangey amber light at night. Every single night you can go, hey Alexa, turn the lights to relax mode. Or, hey Alexa, turn the lights to whatever the naming convention is that you have in your home. It's so dope. Highly recommend, because so many people have bright lights. I don't use any of the bright lights in my space. I have the Hue lights, and I turn them to a specific setting every single night, a couple hours before I'm going to bed.

So that's one thing that you guys can start doing: stop artificial light. Stop, literally, please. If you are that human that lies in bed and plays on your iPad or your cell phone, stop. Please stop. I say this because I love you. Literally. And I know how it's affecting you. And by you just stopping doing that, I promise you you're going to get there after at least a week of doing it. You have to apply a timeframe to it. You can't just expect one night, like, I didn't do it and I didn't get better sleep. You have to apply it for a couple of nights and a couple of weeks, a couple of months, before you can see the compound effect of you stopping staring at bright lights before you go to bed. Okay, so that's number one. Stop artificial lights at least one to two hours before bed. I challenge you to do it. I challenge you to do it.

The second one is sleep in a cool, pitch-black room. Guys, this has a profound impact, with studies that have been done before. Sleeping in like 67, 65 degrees. I don't go that low. I sleep in like 70 and it drops to like 68, which is where most people sleep. Obviously it's very individual here, but that study had it around that temperature. And it can just help you have better quality sleep. It has to be freezing for me, especially when I travel. Hotel rooms have to be at like 67 degrees.

And then keep it pitch black, like no red glow from your TV or fans. I remember, oh my God, this is hilarious. When I did a WarriorBabe trip with this small group that I have, two of them slept in the room together, and they had to put towels in the cracks of the door. They had to block the red light coming from the TV, because you wake up in the middle of the night, you see it, and bam, you're signaling being awake. It's crazy, but it's so true that those small little lights can seriously do that.

And if you have to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, don't turn on the lights. Now this may seem like a risky move here, but seriously, buy a warm night lamp or the Himalayan salt lamps and put that stuff in your bathroom so that you can navigate your bathroom safely in the middle of the night. But don't turn the lights on, because as soon as you turn on a bright light, it's signaling, oh, it's time to wake up.

And then for pitch-black rooms, blackout curtains. I have them right here and I have them also in my bedroom. Game changer, guys. So that's number two, sleep in a cool, pitch-black room.

Number three, I challenge you all to do. I challenge you to do the other two, but I definitely challenge you to do this one. This one's fire. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. I told you guys at the beginning of this that you may feel like a zombie coming into a Monday. This is what a lot of people do, even those who take sleep seriously. I'm guilty of it as well. Monday to Thursday, y'all are on point. And then Friday comes and you think that you can sleep in Saturday and Sunday. And what happens is your body starts to acclimate to that new sleep schedule in literally just those two days. That's why you feel like a zombie coming into Monday, because you slept in and you got so much more sleep on Saturday and Sunday. And it can throw you off for about a day, aka why you feel like a zombie on Monday. Those two days over the weekend of sleeping differently can make your body adapt to that new schedule pretty quickly. And by doing this, you lose quality of sleep.

So again, this is a challenge I want you guys to do and to accept. And the reason why it throws you off is because all of the chemicals in your body get thrown off. Melatonin gets thrown off. Dopamine gets thrown off. All the chemicals that wake you up in the morning get thrown off. All the things that tell you that you're really tired and want to go to sleep get thrown off. So just by that happening for two days, it can start to shift, and that's why you feel like a zombie coming into a Monday.

So I challenge you guys to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, or give or take a little bit on the weekend, but not so much. If you normally wake up at six o'clock in the morning and you're sleeping until nine, I just would not recommend that.

So again, guys, I challenge you. I want you all to accept this challenge to focus on getting better quality sleep. And like I said, I'm aware that you guys have busy lifestyles and schedules, but I encourage you to aim for at least seven hours of sleep a night, especially if you want all of these things. If you're trying to burn body fat, you're trying to build more muscle, you're trying to have more definition, you're trying to get more toned, and you're getting poor sleep, you are probably going to progress at only 50% of your true potential. So focus on better sleep.

And guys, if it means not watching Netflix, think about it. A show is typically an hour long. Dude, if you can turn off the TV and dedicate that extra 45 minutes to an hour to at least getting your body ready to go to sleep, then do it. Stop playing on your iPad. Stop playing on your phones. Put that shit away. Focus on better sleep. And I promise you, I literally promise you guys, you will have better results.

Okay, so that concludes the podcast for today. The three things again, just to repeat: stop artificial light at least one to two hours before bed. Sleep in a cool room, like 67 degrees, 70 degrees, 65 if you want to get really low. So sleep in that cool room. Sleep in a pitch-black room. It helps tremendously. Block all of the lights that are there. Get a night light so that if you do have to get up in the middle of the night, you don't turn on the light. Navigate safely with the night light. And number three, go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day.

All right, guys. If you're listening to this podcast, screenshot it. Tag @NikkieyStott and @WarriorBabe, and then do hashtag challenge accepted. I want to see how many of you guys are actually going to take this seriously. For real, this is what I coach all women on, and what our coaches coach all women on inside of WarriorBabe. So y'all are getting free coaching around sleep right now. So take it seriously. All right, y'all. See you in the next podcast. Peace out.

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.