Sleep and Nutrition: Maximize Your Physical Performance Guest Post
Check out this guest blog post by aspiring blogwriter Karim, who would like to share the knowledge he has gained about sleep issues,nutrition and physical performance through his own experiences. I would love tohear your feedback on the thoughts he will share below!
If you ever wanted to improve your physicalperformance in the gym or in any kind of sports you practice, then you need tounderstand that it is not only about doing more exercises and practicing newmoves, but it is a lot bigger than that.
You need to master the system that your bodyoperates in and control the environment that your body interacts with. Insimple words, it is about two basic things, your sleep and your nutrition - akathe fuel that you provide to your body.
Sleep and nutrition play a very important rolein how your body performs in the actual playground, so mastering them is goingto be as important as honing in the skills of the game that you participate in.
Why Are Sleep And Nutrition That Important For PhysicalPerformance
Your Nutrition is the fuel that you provide toyour body, imagine you are filling the tank of your car with low-quality fuel,would you expect it to perform at its best with that fuel?
Your body is no different, the food that you eatfeeds the different cells of your body and it is the building block for yourdifferent muscles, if the blocks are of low quality then your cells are notgoing to grow stronger and they will not be in their optimal state.
Buildingmuscle is an act of balancing between the number ofcells that break down and the cells that grow. As you exercise, you tend to breakdown your muscle tissue due to the weight and stresses that your body experiencesduring exercise, these stresses need to be equalized with the correct food thatprovides your body with fuel that it can use to rebuild and regrow thosemuscles. Protein is a primary component for muscle regrowth and buildingbecause proteins are the main building block for muscles.
Also, sleep is of great importance when it comesto physical performance and building muscles. The main importance of sleep isthat it is the time for your body to rest and have a chance to repair andrebuild itself.
When you’re asleep, growth hormone gets producedincreasingly and your body starts doing its work. It has differenteffects on different types of cells, butwhat we are interested in is that it plays a role in protein metabolism whichis very important for building and repairing the different muscle tissues as wehave mentioned that protein is the main building block for muscle cells.
Also, when you are sleep deprived the levels ofstress hormones in your blood skyrocket, which affects your ability to concentrateand remain calm which plays a very important role in your ability to do performoptimally.
How to Optimize Sleepand Nutrition to Acheive Maximum Physical Performance
To get the best results for your physicalperformance you need to make sure that your diet is balanced between theproteins, carbs, and fats. Proteins work as the building block for muscletissues, and carbs work as energy packs that fuel your body with the energy itneeds to perform the exercises.
You may eat differenttypes of food to achieve your bestresults and this may consist of:
- Berries
- Salmon
- Beans/Legumes
- Pasta
- Bananas
- And more…
You may also want to exploredifferent meal plan combinations for muscle building so you can build your muscles and improve your physicalperformance. Basically, these plans tend to consist of five or six meals a dayand focus on proteins and carbs (with small servings of healthy fats) toprovide your body with the proteins it needs to build your muscle. You may wantto change your diet based on what do you want to achieve because your body willneed different elements for achieving different goals.
When it comes to sleep, you will basically needto get around 7-9 hours of sleep a day consistently. When you sleep less yourisk that your levels of stress will be high and your ability to focus will decrease.When you sleep more, you will likely be drowsy and won’t have time to do thethings you need to get done in a day.
So how do you get that right balance between notsleeping too much or too little? First, you need to know that these are two differentproblems that require different tactics to solve. If you sleep too much youwill need to set an alarm, multiple alarms or even tell your family to wake youup.
When you sleep too little, you may need topractice some relaxation techniques, go to the gym or do some other physicalactivity that would help you feel like your body needs to sleep, go to a sleepdoctor, or you may even purchasea weighted blanket that could help yourelax more when you want to sleep if you have trouble with anxiety or relaxation.
Conclusion
To sum it up, you need to understand that sleepand nutrition play a very important role in your ability to physically performwell as these are the best sources of fuel your body needs to be able to trainand perform at your best.
Your diet needs to include dense, lean proteinoptions balanced with carbs and fats, and you should shoot for 7-9 hours ofsleep a day to achieve your maximum productivity and focus.
I hope you enjoyed Karim’s thoughts on sleep,nutrition and physical performance and would love to hear any thoughts or feedbackyou may have!
Wishing you all the best during this crazy time!
–Ricci-Lee Hotz, MS, RDN
Denver’s Dancing Dietitian
A Taste of Health, LLC
“Improving Quality of life one bite at a time”
Author Bio
I am Karim, I run a sleeping blog because I hadsuffered from sleep issues for over 5 years so I decided to educate myselfabout the topic and share what I learn with those who are suffering fromsimilar issues.