While sleeping, your body is at its peak in terms of growing. Muscles develop more, wounds heal quicker and hair growth increases. While you’ll still gain weight while awake, at night is where the real magic happens. How can you use this to your advantage then? There are a few key steps to making your rest more effective through natural training and supplementation!
As they say in the professional sports world, half of training is sleeping. Many men and women who want to gain weight, professional athletes and bodybuilders alike frequently incorporate an afternoon nap to either replenish lost energy reserves or to help the body in growing muscle. If an afternoon nap isn’t exactly possible with your schedule, it’s instrumental to get a good night of sleep in order to start packing on the pounds. So, if you want to gain weight – keep that in your mind.
Time Of Sleep Is More Important Than Duration Of Sleep
Your body likes what’s called ‘homeostasis, or reaching a state of equilibrium. It’s a common misconception that as long as you’re getting ~8 hours of sleep, then all is good! That’s not the case however. Going to sleep at 10 one night, 1 AM the other and at 11 at another night is not what your body wants. In fact, it’ll likely upset bodies’ equilibrium.
Your body prefers a consistent, reliable rest schedule. Likewise with waking up, your body’s natural clock likes to be acclimatized to a certain, predictable routine. Hormone production and regulation can change drastically if the bodies homeostasis is in disarray.
That’s not to say you can have a reliable, four hour sleep schedule and still be fine! Both duration and time of sleep are very important, however in order to maintain homeostasis, doing just one of the two won’t make the cut.
Using Supplements To Get Deeper Sleep
You’ve certainly had nights where you slept uninterrupted for 8-10 hours, yet awake still feeling as though you didn’t truly fall asleep. You’ve likely had those nights where you truly slept like a baby and feel completely rejuvenated. How can you experience that more often?
Behold! The wonderful world of supplements! There are two wildly popular supplements that can assist you in getting a deep sleep that don’t involve any type of prescription sleeping pills. Chances are you’ve heard of melatonin. A hormone produced by your pineal gland, melatonin is hugely used to help people with insomnia and jet lag issues.
While sleeping, melatonin levels peak in the human body at around 3-4:00 AM, and taper off shortly after towards 7:30 AM. Melatonin is hugely responsible for a deep night of sleep, and supplementation can yield great results.
ZMA is a mixture of Zinc Monomethionine Aspertate, Magnesium Aspertate and Vitamin B6. Rapidly gaining in popularity amongst bodybuilders, ZMA is touted to help the body achieve deeper levels or REM sleep. It is common to achieve higher amount of ‘active’ dreaming too, which may be appealing to many of you out there!
With that knowledge in mind, diet and working out is only a part to unlocking the weight gain question. A huge amount of progress is done while sleeping, and making sure you get effective sleep is a big factor to gaining weight. Aside from that, having a nutrient rich dinner with all of your vitamins is also very important!
As the old saying goes –A watched pot never boils. Same goes for your muscles!