We tend to take sleep for granted. Hit the sack, get as many hours as a hectic schedule allows, and then rise to a blaring alarm clock. A shower, coffee, and a busy workday help keep us on our feet and stumbling through our day, even if we’re weighed down by fatigue with every step.
Sleep is so underrated that we allow almost anything to get in the way of a solid eight hours. Our modern life has us blinking under bright artificial lights, idling the evenings away on the Internet, and watching late-night television programs. According to international surveys, most residents of developed countries sleep between five and six hours nightly.
The body and brain need more. The results of poor, minimal sleep show up in the increased risks of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and, of course, weight gain. You may be relieved to hear that an incredibly effective weight loss strategy is to simply sleep better—and more—than you currently do. Even better, taking time for your evening visualization can go a long way to ensuring that you do sleep well. But first you have to rule out an insidious robber of rest that plagues overweight people.
THE SLEEP THIEF
When someone comes to me looking to lose at least 75 pounds, the first thing I ask them is whether they’ve been checked for sleep apnea. I battled this devastating condition myself, and I would never have been able to lose so much weight without getting treatment.
Someone with sleep apnea continually and repeatedly stops breathing during sleep. (Apnea is a Greek word that literally means “without breath.”) The condition is characterized by window-rattling snores, long gaps in breathing, and gasping as the sufferer struggles for air. The reason for these symptoms is that airways actually collapse during sleep; sufferers can go a minute or longer without breathing. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t realize you have it because people with sleep apnea don’t fully wake up during an episode. However, they never reach deep sleep, either, and as a result they’re always sleep deprived.
For a long time, sleep specialists thought that sleep apnea was purely a result of weight gain—that being overweight put a person at risk for sleep apnea. That’s because fatty deposits gather in the neck, causing the airways to collapse during sleep. But more recently, researchers have discovered that sleep apnea can actually cause weight gain, too—it goes both ways! In 2011, sleep scientists at the University of Arizona reported results from a long-term sleep apnea study. The researchers tracked 3,001 men and women who fell into one of three categories: they had no symptoms of sleep apnea, intermittent symptoms, or severe apnea. After five years, the researchers found that patients with the most severe cases had gained twice as much weight as those with few symptoms.1
Sleep apnea triggers weight gain because it activates your FAT programs. Long gaps in breathing every night put the body under chronic stress. As research clearly shows, chronic stress causes the release of cortisol and other stress hormones that signal to your brain that it’s time to hoard fat and slow down metabolism. The stress spills over into your waking hours, as well, because anyone with sleep apnea understandably lacks energy as they go through their day. Battling low energy on a daily basis causes junk food cravings and further fuels FAT programs.
A few years ago, a guy named Alan called me. He lived in Melbourne and wanted to talk to me about losing weight. He went on about his physical trainers, his diet, and how many calories he eats on good days and bad days. But the whole time Alan was talking I could hear his heavy, labored breathing over the phone. I immediately suspected that he might have sleep apnea, and I asked if he had been to see a sleep specialist.
At first Alan was resistant. “I sleep okay,” he said, and kept talking about his exercise and food habits. I finally stopped him and said, “I don’t want to talk about those details yet. First, you need to get checked for sleep apnea.” We’ve been so conditioned to believe that weight gain is a result of eating too much or moving too little that we often fail to see huge problems with our health that are directly related to the weight. I finally convinced Alan that before he did anything else to try and lose weight, he needed to see a specialist.
Four months went by before I heard from Alan again. Then, out of the blue, he called to tell me some happy news: he had lost 88 pounds in four months. And he hadn’t spent any extra time obsessing over his fitness plan or his diet. All he had done was get treatment for his sleep apnea, and the weight had just fallen off.
I knew that Alan would begin to lose weight after managing his sleep apnea because that’s what happened to me. I had a world-class case of sleep apnea. My wife used to sleep with earplugs, and she had spare earplugs for guests when they visited. I remember one time I was on a long flight sitting at the back of the plane. I dozed off for a bit. When I opened my eyes, every single person on the plane as far as I could see was peering over the back of their seats at me. Rows and rows and rows, little kids, parents, elderly folks—they had all turned around and were staring at me because of my snoring.
Getting a sleep apnea diagnosis means that you may have to spend the night in a sleep laboratory hooked up to electrodes that track your breathing and brain waves. That may sound like a hassle, but when you consider all the crazy things we try in the effort to lose weight, a night in a sleep laboratory is actually very reasonable and cost-effective. And, unlike diets, getting checked for sleep apnea addresses a real issue rather than offering a Band-Aid approach.
My sleep apnea was revealed when I was at a sleep laboratory. Although I was supposed to spend the entire night, within two hours the sleep technicians woke me up to tell me I definitely had sleep apnea; in fact, I had one of the worst cases they had ever seen. Pretty much the whole time I was gasping for air.
The sleep technicians put me on a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, a mask that you wear that blows air into your nose and mouth. The air pressure prevents the airways from collapsing. Once the technicians got the pressure to the right level, I got my first good night’s sleep in years. When I woke up, my mind was clear and calm. For the first time in years, I actually had dreams. I was relaxed, my stress levels went down, and my energy and clarity increased.
Depending on how serious your sleep apnea is, you might be able to manage it with nasal decongestants, sleeping on your side, or wearing a specially designed mouthpiece that puts the jaw in a position that helps keep airways open. Some people resort to surgery. Regardless of the route you take, managing sleep apnea has to be a priority.
WHY YOU NEED TO SLEEP MORE
Even if you don’t have sleep apnea, there’s a good chance you’re not getting enough shut-eye. In 2004, Stanford scientists tracked the sleep patterns of 1,000 people in Wisconsin and found that the less sleep someone got, the heavier they were. And there was a tipping point: sleeping less than six hours a night was significantly linked to obesity.2
Researchers at the University of Chicago, led by Eve Van Cauter, a sleep specialist, asked a group of healthy men to sleep for only four hours a night for two nights. Afterward, Van Cauter ran blood tests and tracked the men’s eating. She found that the men ate 24 percent more calories mostly in the form of sugary and fatty foods. The blood tests revealed dramatic changes in the men’s hormones: levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin climbed, while levels of leptin—which suppresses appetite—fell.3
In 2010, researchers at the University of Chicago found that people who are trying to lose weight will lose twice as much fat when they get a full night’s sleep.4 This study also revealed that sleeping less than six hours a night raises levels of ghrelin, triggering hunger and slowing metabolism. It also decreases sensitivity to leptin and insulin.
When you fail to get enough sleep, your brain can spur you to make poor choices the following day. A Harvard study published in the journal Sleep around the same time found sleep-deprived teens favored fatty food and snacks compared with teens who got a solid eight hours. In fact, for each hour increase of sleep (up to eight), the odds that a teen would consume extra junk calories declined 21 percent.5
Living life sleep deprived leads to more than weight gain. A ten-year study of more than 71,000 women found that those who slept five hours or less on a typical night were up to 45 percent more likely to suffer heart attacks than women who slept eight hours.6 Japanese scientists tracked the sleep habits of 1,255 people with high blood pressure for nearly two years. They found that those who slept fewer than 7.5 hours per night, on average, increased their risk of heart attack or stroke by 68 percent.7
Sleep supports the health of your entire body. Specialists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have found that a number of bodily systems suffer when we don’t sleep enough: the heart, lungs, and kidneys don’t function properly, immunity to infection weakens, the risk of depression and other mood disorders rise, and appetite soars while metabolism slows down.8 How can poor sleep cause so much harm? Sleep is how your body recharges its batteries. The brain slides into restorative wave patterns that heal the body and prepare it for the challenges ahead. Memories are formed, learning is made concrete, and bodily functions are reenergized. As you fall asleep, your brain passes through an alpha wave state, the same brain wave state we elicit through visualization. Once you’re asleep, you’ll then go much deeper into the theta and delta states associated with memory, emotions, and rejuvenation.
But when you deprive your body of these brain states, you’re putting your body under constant chronic stress, and the results can be seen in the studies above. Your body releases the stress hormone cortisol, which activates your FAT programs, and your body begins going into chronic fat storage mode.
Weight troubles accelerate exponentially should you develop sleep apnea. Now you’re waking several times a night, you almost never reach a state of deep, restorative sleep, and cortisol levels go up even further. You’re in a vicious cycle where the body responds by further decreasing sensitivity to leptin, slowing your metabolism, and putting you on a ravenous hunt for energy in the form of calories.
GET YOUR ZZZS BACK
Once you’ve been checked for sleep apnea and successfully treated, there’s another option for making sure your sleep is restful, deep, and restorative: visualization. When Vicki first began the evening visualizations with the Gabriel Method, she hadn’t slept well for years. Her insomnia took the form of waking in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back asleep. This changed with her first visualization: “Once I started doing the bedtime meditation, I slept through the night seven nights in a row!” she says. “This is huge. I’m convinced it’s the visualization.”
There’s no question that it’s the mind-body relaxation technique of visualization that’s helping. Researchers have used visualization and similar mind-body techniques like meditation and kriya yoga—which is a form of guided-imagery meditation similar to SMART Mode—to help people sleep better. When researchers at Northwestern University compared insomniacs who were taught kriya yoga with those who were given basic information on how to sleep better, after two months the researchers found that the yoga group fell asleep faster, slept longer, and spent more time in deep sleep.9
Just how powerful can guided-imagery meditation—a form of visualization—be in helping people reach sound sleep? Researchers at the University of Minnesota tested regular guided-imagery-based meditation against a top-selling prescription sleep drug. The researchers recruited 30 insomniacs. Half of the patients began practicing daily guided imagery; the rest were given a prescription for the sleep drug Lunesta. After two months, the people who used guided-imagery meditation were sleeping much better than they were at the beginning of the study. What’s more, they were sleeping as soundly as the people taking the sleep drug. After another three months, the researchers checked in with the volunteers and found that the guided-imagery group was actually doing better than the medication group.10
The University of Minnesota researchers also reported that the guided-imagery participants were much happier with their treatment than the group taking pills was; they reported an overall improvement in their quality of life.11
Taking time for an evening visualization will improve your sleep almost immediately. Linda found that she began falling asleep faster after just two days of doing the evening visualization. “I started sleeping more peacefully than I could believe possible,” she says. “And the next day, my craving for sweets was almost gone.”
Nearly any type of visualization practice will be immediately helpful, but one of the reasons the Gabriel Method visualizations are so powerful is that we use a “frequency-following” pattern in the background. Frequency-following means that the music has a beat that encourages your brain to cycle at the same frequency as the music. As the visualization progresses, that cycle slows. Your brain waves will start to follow this pattern. By the end of the visualization, you will drift deeper and deeper into sleep. Some people worry that they’re falling asleep during the visualization, but they shouldn’t. It’s designed to help you sleep, and your subconscious will still be just as receptive to the positive suggestions as when you are awake.
GABRIELIZE YOUR SLEEP HABITS AND BEDROOM
If you set a regular bedtime routine, you’ll train your body to slow down and have an easier time falling asleep. I have a little ritual that I do sometimes: I take a hot bath or shower in which I make the water progressively warmer as I become accustomed to the temperature. After I get out, I do a gentle stretch or two, such as a simple hamstring stretch or the child’s pose in yoga in which I get on my knees, forehead touching the ground, and stretch my hands out in front of me for a minute or two.
Then I get into bed, breathe slowly and deeply, and start my visualization.
You’ll soon find that sleeping better will give you more energy and clarity, reduce sugar cravings, and accelerate weight loss.
Remember, you can download our evening visualization for free at www.TheGabrielMethod.com/freecd.