Ryan: Hi. This is your host Ryan and I am here today with our special guest Dr. Beverly Yates.
Dr. Beverly Yates is an expert on weight loss and women’s health and especially PCOS weight loss. She has over 2 decades of clinical experience, she is a caring doctor, and a lifelong athlete. In fact in her former career as an MIT education electrical engineer Dr. Beverly was a problem solver and now as a doctor she continues to use that problem solving skill to help other women solve their weight loss problems. In today’s interview, which is part of Dr. Beverly’s PCOS weight loss tips series we are going to be talking about why poor sleep is the enemy of PCOS weight loss. Beverly welcome to the call and thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Yates: Absolutely. My pleasure.
I always look forward to giving people really helpful, useful, specific information about this.
How the Quality of Sleep Affects Your Ability to Lose Weight Ryan: When you mentioned we were going to be talking about sleep and weight
loss you kind of took me aback here.
I have been curious does the quality of sleep that you get actually affect your ability to lose weight if you are a woman suffering from PCOS?
Dr. Yates: Yeah. You know I think honestly Ryan, one of the best or maybe worst
kept secrets about having success at losing weight and keeping it off revolves around the issues with sleep.
Many people who have problems with their weight don’t understand that the quality of sleep that they have directly affects their ability to lose weight and keep it off and this is unfortunately, it doubles down and really penalizes women with PCOS even further with their weight loss struggles.
How Poor Sleep Leads to Continual Weight Gain Ryan: So can poor sleep lead to continual relentless weight gains if it is
something that you don’t address? Dr. Yates: Yeah, that is true for both women and for men and unfortunately for
women in general sleep can have a double whammy right because men generally sleep more deeply and more easily then women do.
Women are more likely to have the busy mind and the problems with insomnia. If you look at sleep as a broad category women struggle with it much more typically then men do throughout our respective life times and for women it is also as a general statement harder to lose weight then it is for men. If you put those 2 things together and oh my goodness this can make for a really deep seeded problem. Now people shouldn’t feel hopeless but if a woman has PCOS and she has sleep problems and she has got a weight loss issue she has got to get her sleep straightened out or she is not going to have success with the weight loss.
PCOS and Sleep Problems Ryan: So you mentioned women often as compared to men have maybe a
tougher time achieving that deep sleep.
What about women and girls with PCOS do they often, is it common for women with PCOS to struggle with sleep problems in addition to having difficulty losing weight?
Dr. Yates: Yeah because for women and girls with PCOS right if they also have sleep
problems it is definitely double trouble for the whole set of things that go with being able to have success and losing weight and keeping it off.
A current online survey that I am leading I hear all the time from women and girls from all over the place that they are having some difficulty with their sleep. Some people have sleep problems because of stress, some people have difficulty with sleep because a lot of their internal signaling if you will there cycle, their menstrual cycle, their sleep cycles, other cycles are just not regular and this is part of the trouble. So the question comes up commonly. Is this part of what makes it so hard to lose PCOS weight? The answer is yes it is. For some women with PCOS the struggle is being able to get to sleep when they first lay their head on their pillow. Some women it is hours really Ryan before they go to sleep. For others the hard part is getting back to sleep. Like let’s say a woman wakes up she needs to go to the bathroom to pee she comes back to go back to sleep and she can’t do it. She can lose a half hour, hour, 2 hours. That is not uncommon at all to have those sleep dropouts. So for some PCOS suffers though it is both sides of this issue they can’t get to sleep and then they can’t get back to sleep. So that is just really a hard thing when that happens that way. Some women report having a busy mind and this is true for women in all stages of life not just mothers of young children or perimenopausal women. Some women really struggle with this busy mind thing and they say boy you know Doc I wish I had a switch I could flip to turn their mind off.
Their mind is a buzz with their to do list or stuff that they are processing that happened during the day and they don’t really rest very well. It’s a real set up for issues with not enjoying that critical deep restorative sleep and thus the next day they feel crummy, real lousy day after day. As if all that isn’t enough to deal with women find that the later they stay up the more they might find that they crave foods especially sweets in the late hours of the night. It is the typical chips and carbo binging that could go on after say 10, 11 o’clock, midnight and that is trouble for sure. That is a fast way to turbo charge weight gain.
How Poor Sleep Causes Food Cravings Ryan: So, is that true that poor sleep actually causes food cravings for the
like the things that you mentioned like starchy things, like potato chips and tortilla chips?
Dr. Yates: Yeah definitely for chips and things. You know the tortilla chips, the
potato chips.
If you noticed lately now sometimes the stores have been based chips and they have got yams and all kinds of things for chips and bottom line is yes. It is specific for starch.
Ryan: So what is it about the starchy things? I am curious to know. Dr. Yates: Yeah. It’s interesting. They don’t wake up craving like a salad. They don’t
go to the late end of the day craving say an avocado or nuts or seeds. They crave specifically the starchy stuff.
So the poor sleep does lead to food cravings especially for these starchy foods and once you are up past a certain time for most people say about 10 o’clock in the evening their local time or 11 o’clock your body’s natural rhythms really are thrown off. Your metabolism thinks hey I am still up so it must be time to eat again. So of course you want to eat and I don’t mean in this case salads and as you stay up later and later your body wants more food to fuel the fact that you are awake even if you are just sitting on a couch staring at the TV. Just being awake is enough. You don’t necessarily have to truly be active and what kind of food does your body want when you stay up too late, crisp fresh vegetables or a baked fish or roasted meats. Nope, your body wants starchy foods or sweets because these contain lots of carbohydrates. These are a fast source of energy and for most folks a really tasty way to boost blood sugar fast. Notice I keep saying fast. The body wants a quick reward that time of night. So if you eat calories late in the day they are very very likely, if you are a woman with PCOS weight issues, they are going to wind up frankly ladies stored as fat and these calories are eaten late in the day they are not going to be burned for energy right because again you are probably sitting on your butt.
It is not like you are sitting on your spin bike. Wouldn’t that be great while you are watching your TV, movies or whatever it is that you are catching up on. It’s the time of day, frankly, where your body expects to be resting. It is not the time of day the body expects to be active and your metabolism tracks that. Your metabolism is not at its most efficient late at night. It is much more efficient earlier in the day. So if you are eating those chips and you are up late at night and you have those kinds of cravings you can say hello PCOS weight gain and goodbye PCOS weight loss. This is not a good situation.
How Going to Sleep at Different Times Causes Food Cravings Ryan: So I am going to ask you a question here and I think I know the answer to
it but I am still curious. I just want to clarify.
So if you go to bed later then you should or if you tend to go to bed at wildly different times does that cause the food cravings and especially in the same kind of topic we have been talking about here especially food cravings for starchy things like the chips and the sweets late at night?
Dr. Yates: Yeah it does.
So let’s set this up. Here is what is the purpose sleep is in part for the body particularly with respect to PCOS weight loss. Poor sleep can really destroy the best laid plans for weight loss of all kinds and this includes if you have PCOS. For one who experiences poor sleep her metabolism, her ability to burn calories as fuel is affected by it. Sleep is where all healing comes from. Sleep is when the body resets, the mind restores, and the spirit and psyche resolve difficulties. It is where all of your processing happens. It is where problems are solved and it’s the well spring for creativity and calmness during the day. Now Ryan, having said that the food cravings going to bed at different times that are just all over the map the cravings for starches and sweets late at night it’s a catastrophe from the point of view of PCOS weight loss. This is a real setup for deeper problems with creating and addiction to sweets and starches. This is how women with PCOS can get in the habit of eating lots and lots of chips, bags full sometimes, cookies, all kinds of things. I mean you hear these really sad stories that women will sometimes feel out of control and its specific to this late in the day poor sleep issue and by then your body has naturally slipped into fat storage mode. It has left fat burning mode. So the metabolism is expecting your calories to come in much earlier in the day and so eating the chips and sweets late at night equals fat. That is the result.
If you go to bed at a regular time and get 8 hours of sleep these cravings usually go away completely. Let me say that again. If you go to bed at a regular time every night and get 8 hours of sleep these cravings usually go away completely. If you stay up you want to eat this is the trouble. Your metabolism isn’t burning for fuel and instead your metabolism turns what you eat into fat. So if you put yourself further and further behind in the possibility of PCOS weight loss if you stay up too late. So I have this to say as our take home message here. Ladies go to bed. It doesn’t matter if you get one more thing done. If it’s at the expense of your weight and overall health. It can wait. Go to bed on time night after night. Your health and weight loss success depend on it. I can’t tell you how commonly, Ryan, I hear from women that they just want to get one more thing done. That has got to be the most common thing I hear. One more thing done. I am like no this is disaster, ruin, go to bed. Go to bed.
How Fast do the Effects of Better Sleep Habits Start to Show Ryan: I am going to ask this question and I know we didn’t plan on this but I am
just curious to know.
If I am a woman with PCOS and I am listening to this interview now and I am thinking ok I am going to take your word for it Dr. Beverly. How fast if I change nothing else in my life but I just make it a point every single night to go to bed at 10-11 o’clock at night, get a full 8 hours of sleep, get the same 8 hours every single day, go to bed at the same time every single day. How fast might I start to see the effects of that and what is the first effect that I am going to see? Is it going to be the reduction in cravings, am I going to see a slight drop in the weight gain? What am I going to see first and how quickly might I see that?
Dr. Yates: That is a great question.
The typical sequence and I underline the word here typical because everybody is different of course, is that the first thing that they are going to notice is that the weight gain stops. They start to win with PCOS weight loss by having the PCOS weight gain come to a halt. After 3 to 4 weeks of the behavior change and going to bed at a regular time and doing their very best to be able to get a full night sleep the next thing usually for most women is that they will notice that their weight will start to go down and it will go down slowly. It is not going to be a fast gallop. There are only a few things that I know of that lead to a fast loss of weight with PCOS but the sleep thing has got to get handled. So typically you have to give it some time. I always tell women with PCOS like I tell all other women who are working on weight loss look you didn’t gain this weight for the most part overnight and it isn’t reasonable to expect it to be gone in 24 hours. We really need to have some patience, put together the right foundations, maybe make some specific tune-ups that are specific for that woman’s needs, and then you should expect that you will have a reliable pattern of weight loss.
So the first thing they should notice is that their weight is no longer going up, the next thing they should notice is that the cravings have decreased and hopefully gone away. It really does take about a full 3 weeks for cravings to stop. If the sleep is the issue the cravings for sugar or for starches and sweets it might be that simple. Just getting to bed on time might really drop their desire for the sugars and the sweets and the chips and all.
Ryan: And if you do the complete opposite? If you decide that you are going
to go to bed at wildly different times every single day, maybe different times on the weekend or week days or maybe you are a nurse or you are a shift worker and you have very different sleep patterns from one day to the next, you have a wildly different sleep schedule. Does that affect weight loss?
Dr. Yates: Yeah it does.
People who do shift work or work around the clock or just have erratic bed times for whatever reason. Yes, going to bed at wildly different times does indeed affect weight loss. It confuses your body’s internal clock for your metabolism and it makes the metabolism slow down because frankly your metabolism no longer knows when it is going to be awake, when it is going to be asleep, when it is going to be more active, less active, when calories are coming in, when calories aren’t coming in and after a while it kind of says oh well. Right it kind of throws its hands up if you will and this leads to fat gain and weight gain and it causes a hard time with returning to an efficient pattern of burning calories and therefore losing weight despite doing other things right like eating well and exercising regularly. Sleep is that important even if you as a woman who wants PCOS weight loss success. If you are doing everything else right and your sleep is a disaster it will sabotage your best efforts.
How Sleep Problems Affect Your Metabolism Ryan: So, what it sounds like you are saying Dr. Beverly is that sleep problems
really mess up your underlying metabolism and your ability to lose PCOS related weight. Why is that exactly?
Dr. Yates: Well here is the deal. Behind the scenes you know.
Your body resets every time you get a good night sleep and you know how you wake up feeling after you have had a good night sleep right. You are like yeah carpe diem, seize the day, bring it on, I am ready. When you have had a lousy night’s sleep your outlook is not so good. So if you don’t get a good night’s sleep you don’t get this reset effect. This tells your metabolism to slow down and it becomes more sluggish. So you gradually get to your personal tipping point particularly with PCOS weight loss issues where your body becomes more and more efficient at storing calories as fat instead of burning the calories you eat as fuel for your daily activities and to fuel your brain which is definitely an energy hog for reasons I think we can all guess at. There are specific herbs and supplements along with certain nutrition and diet choices that can help promote good sleep habits and other lifestyle elements that can really assist a PCOS sufferer to get a good night’s sleep. These combine to make it more possible to lose that stubborn PCOS related weight and experience well deserved weight loss success finally. I put together a helpful guide called The Ultimate PCOS Weight Loss Herbs and Supplements Guide which covers this issue of how sleep affects PCOS weight loss in depth. The information on sleep is offered as a bonus for buying the guide. In this guide I also cover details like how much time to allow between looking at screens like TV, computers, tablets, and all before going to sleep. It’s worth a read to find out what you are doing right and what you need to change for your best benefit. To sign up for the email list and to get that special offer to buy this guide and get that bonus on sleep you can go to www.PCOSWeightLossTips.com for more information.
Ryan: I can’t recommend that guide highly enough for anyone who might be suffering from PCOS and looking to lose weight. I have taken a look at it. I know that you really poured your heart and soul into it and it’s extremely comprehensive and frankly there is really nothing else available today that speaks specifically to PCOS weight loss.
So if you are listening to this and you haven’t checked that out then I
Different Sleep Problems and How They Affect PCOS Weight Loss Ryan: Now Beverly, earlier when we were talking about some of the different
problems that women suffer from with respect to their sleep.
I am very curious do the details of the sleep problems like the type of sleep problem does it affect PCOS weight loss in the same way? Like for example you talked about someone that might wake up multiple times at night, some women might have just a hard time going to sleep. Is one worse than the other and what if a woman with PCOS doesn’t get enough sleep each night how does that affect her ability to lose weight overall?
Dr. Yates: Sure, that is another set of great questions there Ryan. Let’s tease those
apart. Thanks for asking it.
Ok, now this is based on my clinical experience as a doctor. Women with PCOS who have a hard time getting to sleep and who then stay asleep once thy finally do get to sleep they tend to have more modest weight gain issues. Like say 10 to 20 pounds or so overweight. Now the women with PCOS who wake up multiple times each night have a hard time getting to sleep, a hard time staying asleep, and a hard time going back to sleep. They tend to have a much more difficult time with weight loss and they gain more pounds on average. They are likely to be 40 or more pounds overweight. Sometimes 100 or more pounds overweight and that weight gain for those ladies tends to be relentless along with the cravings we talked about earlier. So it seems that multiple disruptions to sleep is worse than having a onetime event throughout the night with difficulty with sleep. Now not getting enough sleep is also a problem for the purposes of weight loss. It is a problem for your body’s repair work too. Which means that all of your spring cleaning if you will or routine maintenance it just gets deferred and that doesn’t happen as well as it should when you don’t sleep enough hours. Your body needs enough time to be able to do that. This usually impacts your digestion. It can cause joint pains and muscle aches and of course mental fatigue and just a poor outlook. People’s moods are impacted and their mood tends to be much more on a depressive side. Independent of any body image issues they just don’t feel as well.
What Women with PCOS Weight Issues Need To Know About Sleep Ryan: If we are leave folks with one thing, one big takeaway. What is the
number one most important thing about sleep that women and girls dealing with PCOS weight issues need to know in order to lose that weight?
Dr. Yates: Sure. Top of our list here. Number one most important thing.
If poor sleep is a fact of life for you as a person with PCOS issues please know that you must find a solution to it as a part of regaining the ability to lose that PCOS related weight and to keep it off for good. It’s a must. Poor sleep impacts your short term memory like constantly forgetting where you put your keys and it really gets in the way of weight loss. You may find that like many women with PCOS do that changing one thing for the better leads to other changes that are really helpful too. For example getting regular exercise kind of energizes you during the day and leaves you tired at night. It may make it much easier for you to reliably enjoy a good night sleep. You may also find that your sleep improves with eating more of your food and calories in the earlier part of the day and eating lightly for dinner. So your gut gets a much deserved rest while you are trying to sleep. Going to bed on a full stomach is a mistake and it sabotages getting a good night sleep. Be kind to yourself and take the steps needed to make sleep deep restorative sleep a possibility for you on a regular basis.
Ryan: Beverly as always this was fantastic. Thanks so much for being with us
today.
Is there anything else that we should have talked about that we didn’t cover as we kind of wind down the last minute or so here?
Dr. Yates: No. I think we have given this a thorough pass and this is really the
essence of the issue with sleep and weight loss as it affects PCOS.
I just can’t say it enough. You can get everything else right but if your sleep is a mess you are not going to lose the weight.
Ryan: Wise words to live by for sure.
Now if you are listening to this interview and you would like to find out how you can learn more about the programs that Dr. Beverly offers about the free tips that she offers and if you would like to get a complimentary free report which contains weight loss tips and secrets all specifically geared to win with PCOS then I highly recommend that you take a moment to visit PCOSWeightLossTips.com. Once again that is PCOSWeightLossTips.com. Thanks so much for being with us and take care.
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