Sleep is an important part of a healthy lifestyle.

Set your clocks back and add an extra hour of sleep to your routine—everyday!

Don’t let a lack of sleep sabotage your workouts.

Sleep deprivation not only affects your mind but also your physical body.

At one time or another, we’ve all experienced a sleepless night that left us irritable, off-kilter and exhausted. One night doesn’t do that much harm, but over time the long-term effects of sleep deprivation put many people at risk for mental, health, and physical problems.

Mental fog or memory issues are common among people who don’t get enough sleep, but there are other consequences that can have negative effects on your fitness goals.

Studies show that people who do not get the recommended 7-8 hours per night are more likely to gain weight, experience high blood pressure and suffer from a weakened immune system—despite working out and being healthy in other areas such as eating right.

Not getting enough sleep stops your body’s ability to defend itself from things like the cold or the flu. If you are sick, it takes longer to get better. Over time, the effects can lead to bigger issues like diabetes.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, experts have known for years that not getting enough sleep is directly linked to your body hormone levels and the ability to regulate and metabolize glucose. People who do not get enough sleep are at a higher risk for weight gain and type 2 diabetes.

Sleep deprivation increases the levels of insulin after you eat. Higher levels of insulin increase fat storage and your risk for diabetes.

Your body needs more than a healthy diet and exercise.

When you sleep your body is hard at work repairing and resetting itself and when you don’t get enough sleep it can do that. Bottom line—without sleep your body systems don’t work as they should. Multiple studies show that getting less than 6-8 hours of sleep increases the risk of early death by 12 percent.

To find out how much sleep you should get for your age check out this chart by the National Sleep Foundation:

Add an extra hour of sleep and reap the benefits of a good nights sleep—your mind and body will thank you!

Here are a few tips provided by the National Sleep Foundation:

• Stick to a sleep schedule all week long
• Practice a relaxing bedtime ritual.
• Exercise every day
• Set your bedroom temperature, sounds, and light levels to promote sleep.
• Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows.
• Alcohol and caffeine are sleep stealers
• Turn off electronics before bed and store them in a different room

Halloween Candy: The ‘trick’ to ‘treating’ yourself during this fun holiday.

Halloween candy is tricky. Not all calories and exercises are created equal.

Halloween is a fun holiday for kids who are always on the move. Most kids can eat anything, but candy can be trouble for adults trying to watch their weight or what they eat.

Even though most candy Trick or Treater’s receive or what people buy to hand out is snack size. What most people don’t realize is how fast those calories add up, and how difficult and time consuming can be to burn them off.

A snack size Snickers bar, which also happens to be most popular with adults packs a whopping 80 calories.

What makes snack size candy even more troublesome is they only take two bites to consume, leaving most people reaching for a second or even a third snack size bar. Most people would be better off eating a full size candy bar.

It’s easy to trick your mind into thinking differently about the food you consume.

One medium apple is about the same amount of calories as most snack size candy bars. A large part of eating is the satisfaction of the time it takes to consume the food. For most people, the time it takes to eat or chew an apple is up to 5 times as long at it takes to eat a snack size candy bar. The added bonus with a choosing an apple—is it’s good for you.

Burn it off!

Another way to look at the cost of eating sugary snacks is what do you have to do to burn off those calories.

If you ate three snack size Snickers bars the average person would need to run a 12 minute pace or about five miles per hour for 30 minutes or walk for one hour at an average pace. Or if you don’t like running or walking, you could do burpees for 30 minutes at a pace of 10 per minute and you’d burn around 300 calories.

If you don’t want to skip the treats, the “trick” is to find some time extra time to burn off the calories from something that took only seconds to consume.

Halloween ‘Fun Sizes’ of your favorite candy.

Regular M&M’s = 73 calories

Peanut M&M’s = 90 calories

Reeses’ Pieces = 67 calories

Skittles = 60 calories

Candy Corn = 53 calories

Swedish Fish = 50 calories

Butterfinger = 85 calories

Baby Ruth = 85 calories

Twix = 80 calories

Almond Joy = 80 calories

Snickers = 80 calories

Milky Way = 80 calories

Kit Kat = 70 calories

3 Musketeers = 63 calories

Milk Duds = 53 calories

Peppermint Patty = 50 calories

Consistency.

Did you ever notice that when you miss a day or two of exercise, it suddenly gets even harder to get back at it in the following days? This is why consistency is the one key thing to meeting your fitness goals.

Keeping a regular schedule when it comes to exercise matters because when you end up skipping many days in a row, the health benefits start to fade away. At first, there may be only a decrease in the positive metabolic aspects, but skipping exercise eventually affects motivation, endurance, and can even increase your odds of an injury.

Studies have shown that building momentum can be one of the primary reasons that people continue to exercise. People reported that they felt healthier and more physically aware after exercise or the exertions of the day before and desire to relive that sensation. Longer periods between exercise sessions could potentially dull that enthusiasm.

When your mind continually thinks it is starting over at square one after many days (or weeks/months) of skipping workouts, motivation will drop off.

The truth is that no matter what we do in life it will be hard to achieve the success we want unless we work at it day after day over the course of months and years. This is no different when it comes to your exercise programs. Even if you have the best trainer and fitness tools in the world, and the best diet to follow, but if you do not stick with it consistently, you may end up spinning your wheels.

Consistency is vital for the beneficial changes of exercise to occur in your body. When you keep at an activity, you perfect your form, build endurance and become better each time.

According to the Mayo Clinic of Sports Medicine, regular, consistent exercise stimulates the growth of new capillaries to bring blood to your muscles. It also takes weeks of strength training to grow muscle fibers. If you are hit or miss in your exercise routine, these physiologic changes will take longer to occur, and these changes will not be as powerful.

It takes 4 weeks for YOU to see your body changing.

It takes 8 weeks for YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY to see your body changing.

It takes 12 weeks for THE REST OF THE WORLD to see your body changing.

Remember, effort and intensity are nothing without consistency!