Not Just a Man's World

During the last couple of weeks of the cutting diet I was reminded of an unpleasant side-effect that I suffer from when I’m cutting.  I start to find I can’t sleep properly.  Right now it is 5am on one of these sleepless nights and I’m writing this instead of sleeping.

I always go to bed at about 9.30pm and I would usually sleep through until 7am, getting over 9 hours sleep.  As I strip fat I continue to get to bed at the right time and I get to sleep with ease but find that on a couple of nights each week I wake after only about 4 or 5 hours of sleep.  Perhaps even less.

As the fat loss continues I wake earlier and earlier, no longer waking at 7am or even at 5.30am but instead waking alert and ready for the day as early as 1.30am.  And it happens more frequently.  This week, at the end of my cutting diet, I’ve been up on 4 nights, waking between 1.30am and 3am on each of them.

What’s causing the insomnia?

I really don’t know but I have a few theories:

1. Feeling the cold – my experience of spending cold nights sleeping out in the hills has taught me that if you can’t get your body temperature right you won’t sleep well.  So is it the reduced body temperature caused by the restricted calories?  Studies of animals on restricted calorie diets showed that this sort of diet results in significantly reduced body temperatures (Feinman, RD and Fine, EJ.: “A calorie is a calorie” violates the second law of thermodynamics; Nutrition Journal 2004) and I’ve certainly felt the temperature reduction during this cutting cycle.  Am I being woken by the cold?  I don’t think so.  I feel very alert when I wake whereas waking from cold on the hill I still feel tired.  And anyway, I’ve been sleeping in jumpers and had an extra blanket on the bed.
2. Lack of the right nutrition – dropping your calorie intake makes it difficult to get all of the right nutrients in sufficient quantity.  In particular, if you have a magnesium deficiency then the likelihood is that you won’t be able to sleep well.  But I’m going to struggle to get sufficient magnesium from my food if I’m eating only 1,000 calories each day and I’ve taken nuts out of my diet while cutting.  So perhaps I should be supplementing with extra magnesium when I’m cutting.
3. Evolution playing its part – I’ve stripped a lot of fat from my body.  According to the callipers (which are inaccurate but give good guidance) I have been below 12.5% body fat (the lowest reading they’ll give me) for the last 3 weeks.  While I am pretty sure that their calibration is a bit squiffy, I can certainly see glute muscle outlines and abs all the way down to the bottom set.  What are the chances that my body is waking me up with the evolutionary message that I need to get out there and hunt for food because my reserve fuel source (fat) is running low?

There are advantages to insomnia…

There are definite advantages to this wakefulness.  Apart from a tired moment that usually hits me for an hour partway through the next afternoon I don’t seem to get too tired.  It’s amazing what you can get done with the extra hours.

On Saturday morning I found myself in the 24 hour supermarket at 3am finishing off the Christmas shopping and stocking up on special offer meat and coconut milk.  We don’t live in a big city that never sleeps so I had the whole store to myself.  During the hour I was there, I saw 2 customers and my biggest problem was trying to navigate my trolley round the assault course of crates out for the shelf-stacking.

What are the problems with insomnia?

Sleep is essential to good performance.  When someone says that they can’t achieve their physical goals in the weights room the first culprits to consider are always:

• diet (are you eating enough?); and
• sleep (are you getting enough?).

Both are essential for the body’s recovery.

Dan John has written an excellent article on rest, both during your workouts and also outside the gym.  Within it there is a whole section on getting sufficient sleep and has even advised that he’s managed to lose weight by sleeping.  It seems Dan John doesn’t struggle to sleep when he’s stripping fat…

The problem I meet in the last few weeks of a cutting phase is that I am no longer able to recover.  I think it is partly caused by the sleep deprivation.  As I‘ve mentioned in earlier articles, the key to successfully retaining muscle while stripping fat is to continue to lift heavy weights, so it isn’t ideal if you can’t recover between lifting sessions.

Do you find that you suffer from insomnia when you strip fat?  If so, please let me know if you’ve got any secrets for getting back to sleep.  I’ll be trying magnesium supplementation next time and I’ll be putting cashew nuts and almonds back into my diet as soon as possible.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: side-effects of building muscle
2. Lessons learned this week: falling off the diet wagon
3. Lessons learned this week: the Cholesterol Story
4. Lessons learned this week: water retention