Have you ever thought of, perhaps hoped, there's a magic pill to help you lose weight. Well, the bad news is, unfortunately there's not. But the good news is I'm here to answer all of your questions to make your weight loss journey just that little bit easier.
Why do some people's bodies transform quicker than others.
What would be some of the best advice that you could offer in regards to the menopausal mound.
I've reduced the carbs in my diet and I'm also exercising regularly, but I'm not losing weight. What could be actually going wrong?
What is it about the strength training that helps with weight loss?
I'll be answering these questions a little later on.
This is the Wood Life.
I'm Sam Wood, and we're answering real questions from real people about real life.
So what if I told you.
There's something you do every day and if you do it, it improves your memory, lowers your risk of heart disease, and makes you look younger. All you need is a good night's sleep. Easier said than done, I know, But next we have Australia's number one sleep expert to help us get the best night's sleep we've had in years. Olivia Arossoula is australias number one sleep expert and author of the book Bear, Lion, and Wolf, which are three
different sleep chronotypes. If you don't know what category you fall into, or even what a sleep chronotype is, well she's here to explain it and here to get us better sleep. Olivia, thank you so much for joining us here on the WOODLFE.
Thank you so much for having me so.
First of all, if you could give our Woodlife listeners your top tips to improve their quality of sleep, what would they be? Okay?
Number one would be take chronotype specific sleep strategies into account. Okay, I know a lot of you know websites because I've googled. Trust me, they give sleep strategies, but they don't take into account your chronotype and this can make a huge difference. And this is exactly why I wrote my book on the concept of chronotypes. See what is right for a lion to do at ten pm, for example, in their bedtime routine is different to what a wolf or a
bear should do. For example, at ten pm, lions should be going to bed. However, at ten pm wolves and bears should not be going to bed. It does not correlate with their circadian rhythm, and it is going to lead to bedtime resistance and actually discount the quality of their sleep when they do fall.
Asleep outside going and buying your book, which I highly recommend as I have it at home and it's absolutely fantastic. How do people find out quickly and easily if they are align a wolf or a bear?
Absolutely so. I've got three key questions. Okay, when given the option, what time would you like to wake up? A before six am, B around seven am or C after eight am. Question two, when given the option, what time would you like to fall asleep? A? Ten pm, B around eleven C after midnight? And three, when do you find yourself the most productive? A before midday, B between ten and two pm or three. The later it
gets in the day, the more productive you become. Now, the more a's you get, the more likely you are a lion, which is me by the way, and I think it's you as well, and we're great.
I'm a line.
I was answering the questions as when alone, I'm definitely a line.
Yep, B makes you a bear, which is like my mum, and I love bears. If you've got mostly c's then you are a wolf.
And so what happens if you've got a line and a wolf in the same bed is are they going to get divorced?
No? No, definitely not.
I know that I'm married to a wolf, and I know that I'm a line as you are. I love that you've given that little tool because our listeners will go right. I can take two minutes now to put down my as, my bees, mysas, work out what I am. But you prefaced each of those multiple choice questions with if given the choice, which I love that you did that.
Because my little Charlie, who we call Charlie Bear funny enough, wakes up at five thirty five am every single morning, whether we put her to bed at six seven, if we let us stay out parting till midnight, which of course we don't do, but if we did, it would not matter. We go to Perth. There's a time difference doesn't matter. Five point thirty five am is her wake up time. And it's just this uncanny thing that, no
matter what we seem to do. So when you say if given the choice, we aren't given the choice.
Here's my wife is.
Pregnant and I am the one getting up to look after little Charlie beer and playing games with ear all morning till the rest of the civilized people in the world wake up and join us. So what do you do if you're not given the choice?
There are definitely ways that you can shift into an earlier or later chronotype should you need. Using light is one of the best tools that you can use because light is our primary zitegiber, which means our primary factor to control your succadian rhythm, which ultimately controls how sleepy you are in the evening and how alert you are
in the morning. See for example, you are a wolf who's usually a late chronotype, but you need to get up at you know, five point thirty because you're darling little one designs that that's a great time to be awake. Then you can use the light to your advantage. That would be through exposing yourself to bright sunlight. On a similar level, blocking out light in the evening by wearing
blue light blocking glasses. Blocking out light in the evening is again going to be your number one way that you are going to find it easier to fall asleep earlier.
My wife Sajana will hate that I'm saying this out loud, but not really. But she is one of these people. And I'm sure you've come across the many times that is animate that she doesn't need that much sleep. No, no, I'm fine five hours, six hours, not at the moment while she's pregnant, but when she's not pregnant, she she's.
A night out.
But when people say they don't need much sleep, are they right? Are there some people that don't need much sleep? Or are they actually kidding themselves and they're doing themselves a huge disservice but not getting enough?
Okay to this, I answer yes and no. Okay, let me explain a little bit. So ninety five percent of the population needs seven to nine hours of sleep.
Okay, the magic number that that was gonna be my next question, seven to nine.
Okay.
However, ninety percent isn't one hundred percent. There is a small subset of individuals who actually need less sleep, and this is linked back to genetics. There is a gene called DEC two which individuals with a particular morphism of this gene need only six point twenty five hours to feel refreshed in the morning. So that's the yes column. However, the no column. So research shows that lack of sleep impairs your frontal lobe. Your frontal lobe is responsible for
decision making and judgment. So if you have impaired judgment, you aren't aware that you are perhaps being unproductive, or making mistakes or acting out of character because you think you're being fine, because there's actually an impairment in your frontal lobe so much so that a lack of sleep can actually make you behave as if you have a blood alcohol level of zero point zero five, which is technically drunk.
So there you go, right, And that's a vicious cycle, isn't it. You don't get enough sleep, you don't have the awareness you haven't got enough sleep, and the cycle goes around and around and living drunk your entire life. Exactly right, you're saying they're living. So let's break it down to our wood Life listeners, because I know that the natural follow up question then would be, so how do I know if I'm in.
That five percent?
Because my fear is the one hundred percent of the people that tell you this would tell you they're in that five percent, and that is absolutely not going to be the case.
Absolutely, So I think if you were not in that five percent, that you would be exhibiting the seven key signs of sleep deprivation. So obviously this one goes without saying making mistakes. As mentioned before, a lack of sleep impairs your frontal lobe, which is responsible for a decision
making judgment. It's also responsible for concentration and attention. So if you're finding that you're making little mistakes when you are sleep deprived or when you are, you know, getting less than seven to nine hours of sleep, chances are
you need to get more sleep outside of this. Feeling fatigued, this one is quite obvious, but to understand that seventy percent of human growth hormone, the key catalyst for cellu the repair is produced in solow wave sl means that if you're not getting enough sleep, then naturally you're going to be feeling super exhausted, even if you've had your sleep that you think you need. Brain fog is the next one that I've highlighted. A lack of productivity is
another one. A twenty seventeen study found that when you are sleeping less than five hours, you are four times less productive. However, remember it's unlikely that you're going to be aware of it, so that's.
A really interesting one because I used to train lots of successful business people, and there's almost a culture of it too, of I'll sleep when I'm dead, and I'm being flippant, but you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead and I'm building my empire, And isn't that interesting That effectively,
the science suggests that it's the exact opposite. You are losing productivity, and I think, you know, there's the term in business, works matter, not harder, And I often think these people, unless they are in that very rare five percent, need to just sort of listen to this advice. There's a lot of self awareness needed for this kind of thing too, because a lot of these symptoms or behaviors
that need to be recognized that you're suggesting. I often would think some people would be perhaps showing these signs and not self aware enough or maybe perhaps just too damn stubborn to admit that they're actually happening.
Absolutely, And I think the thing is that it's very normal to be foggy and fatigued. It's very it's just passed off as I'm exhausted. It's you know, it's just it's Monday. Of course I'm exhausted. But it's not normal.
And that's a really good point too. It's not normal. And if you've only ever felt like that, how do you know what normal feels like? Absolutely, you've given me for I think we've got three to go.
Can please keep going?
Another key sign of lack of proper sleep is anxiety. Now, this one is huge across our society. Stress hormone cortisol increases by thirty seven percent after one night of inadequate sleep. This leaves you feeling wired, being unable to switch off, and mentally ruminating, particularly in the evening.
Love it I'm recognizing these things right.
I think there's actually a lack of awareness about how significant sleeplessness is a problem. Like if you genuinely knew that your stress hormone was going to increase by thirty seven percent if you get less than seven hours of sleep that night, I don't think many people would be willing to take that gamble. Nobody wants to feel anxious, restless, like they can't switch off.
Well, there's also a consequence to that. It's harder to lose weight when there's cartersol in your system as well. Say so, I think a lot of people that I speak to that obviously on a weight loss journey. It's interesting when I say to them it actually will prevent you or slow down your weight loss or fat loss, They're like, oh, hang on, why didn't you say that in the first place. Now, perhaps I'm going to give it a little bit more attention.
And absolutely the next one actually links back to exactly what you're saying, weight gain and sugar cravings. This means that you are hungrier, less satisfied when you do it, and you're specifically craving sugar. I'll add in when it
comes to weight loss or fat loss. Another clinical study found that when you are sleeping eight point five hours, you lose fifty five percent more body fat than if you are on exactly the same calories and expending the same amount of energy compared to if you were sleeping five point five hours.
I mean, this is the thing.
We look at the science of calories in calories out, which is important, but to think that that sleep variation of three hours can have such an impact on it, I think will be a really power And again, this is about giving people the information so that they can look at their own personal situation and reflect perhaps that
this is something that they need to address. They need to give more, put more effort into I love that you've given seven things that people need to look out for to see that if they are experiencing all or some of those seven, they fall into that ninety five percent category that does need the adequate amount of sleep. My next question is a follow on from amount of sleep.
What about quality of sleep?
Quality? Trump's quantity? Okay, so you can be having a low quality eight hours, but you can be having a high quality six hours, and you can actually feel more refreshed after high quality six hours.
How do I know when I wake up if I've had a good or a bad night sleep?
Okay? There are definitely ways you can track it, for example using a wearable or an app. However, wearables are more reliable, so of the two, I would prefer a wearable.
Okay, that's good.
Outside of that, you can use a sleep diary. It just asks you the key questions which are going to indicate to you if you have had quality sleep. For example, how refreshed do you feel upon waking? How many times did you wake through the night, how is your levels of mental clarity? These are all key signs that you either have or have not had that quality sleep you need.
We've actually got a call on one of our Woodlife listeners and you actually brought up the challenge that this person faces before this is Gabby, and she send us in a quick question Olivia that I'd love you to listen to and let me know if you've got some advice for Gabby.
I'm a nurse that works a lot of shift work with late afternoons and night shifts.
Jevy'suggestions of how I want to get into a sleep routine while still working shift work at the same time.
Okay, so for shift work is in particular, there are two recommendations for you guys. One, I recommend using melatonin right of course, or see your health professional first to make sure it is right for you, but that has been a great supplement for daytime sleeps. And the second recommendation specific for shift workers is on the last night of shift work, I advise only sleeping for a maximum of three hours in the morning and then having a nap for thirty or ninety minutes later in the day,
provided that it's not later than three point thirty. What this is going to do is it's going to retrain your body to get into its more regular sleep pattern.
Yeah.
I love that those are sleep tips specific for shift workers. However, I do have a signature bedtime routine that I recommend for all of your woodlife listeners. And this is chronotype specific, so whether you are a lion, bear or wolf, you
do need to tweak this depending on your chronotype. However, as a BLAE rule, the signature bedtime routine is to block out blue light using blue light glasses, use lavender oil capsules, to have a good night phone alarm, which is an alarm that pops up one hour before bed, which reminds you to disconnect from tech, to have a shower before bed, to use a magnesium based sleep supplement, to read or meditate, and to use an imask.
I noticed you didn't mention eating copious amounts of M and m's and binge watching Oazac on Netflix, which is really surprising because I thought that was going to be your next tip. And look, I've learned a lot of Livia, and I know that we could dive into this for hours and hours and hours and for our WOODLFE listeners that would like to get their hands on your book, do you want to give you the name of your book one more time.
Absolutely, I would be honored if any of your wood Life listeners picked up a copy of Bear Lion Wolf.
Thank you, thank you so much, Olivia. We have learnt so much about sleep, which is obviously a critical factor for every single one of our listeners. And hopefully we can talk to you again soon. But thank you so much for those little birds are.
Wisdom, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.
Isn't it amazing how many simple tips to get a good night's sleep there are and you're just not doing any or many of them.
Well, I'm going to go off.
And by myself a face mask after this, but up next, I'm going to answer all of your weight loss questions. Ah, losing weight, it would absolutely be the thing that I get asked about the most, Sam, How do I lose weight? Whether it's five kilos or fifty kilos, It's what everybody wants to know, and it's not surprising because most of us, frankly,
are overweight. In Western society, sixty percent of us overweight or obese, so it's no surprise that everyone wants to lose a few or a few more than a few kilos. There's really two sides to it. There's the physical side of things, the science side of things. You know, calories in versus calories out, and if I burn more than I consume, I'm going to drop weight. That's the science of it. But then there's the psychology of it, that is, how am I going to stick to this so that
all of that happens healthily and consistently. And that is the psychological side of things. And that comes back to what is your why. You need to know what your why is because you can say to yourself, I want to lose weight or I need to lose weight.
But if you can't.
Tell yourself why, it's highly unlikely and i'd nearly say impossible for that routine to stick. So it's interesting because the reality is we're going to face challenges when we are trying to lose weight. It's not easy. If it was easy, we wouldn't all be overweight. But if you don't have that why, you're just not going to stick to it. Because when we face those challenges, if you can't remind yourself of why it is that you're doing this,
simply gonna stop doing it. So I just want you to keep that in mind because we're going to answer some of our listeners weight loss questions, which I absolutely can't wait to do. But I just want you to keep in the back of your head this is all well and good, but what is your why? And is it written up somewhere so when things get tough you can go back and remind yourself. So our first weight loss question is Lauren, take it away, Lauren.
Why do some people's bodies transform quicker than others when following a similar or the same plan. Does it depend on how long we've carried extra weight on our bodies and perhaps less muscle mass or muscle memory, or is it more likely to be due to genetics or a hormone balance.
So one part of the question there from Lauren was about muscle mass and muscle memory. I would say it's not really about muscle memory, but it's definitely about muscle. The more lean muscle you have, the faster you burn fat, or the more efficiently your metabolism works, which is why men often lose more weight than women or lose weight
faster than women. So that is a big tick. It's also why if you are trying to lose weight that resistance training should be a part of that process, because if you are then toning and strengthening and building lean muscle, and I'm not talking about getting all big and bulky.
I'm talking about lean, toned.
Long muscles that will in fact turbocharge your weight loss process. Then there's the hormone side of things and the genetic side of things, which is absolutely a factor. And this is where I may be controversial, but I definitely don't think it's as big a factor as some people think it is. I feel some people like to how do I put this sensitively? I absolutely don't want people to think, oh, you don't get it, mate, that's so insensitive, because it's not.
But the reality is everybody if they follow the program ten out of ten and I'm not suggesting you need to do that on all that progress not perfection, but everybody, if they do follow the perfect eating plan and they exercise meticulously and consistently and hard, will lose weight. I promise you. I've been doing this for twenty two years. I've worked with fifteen twenty thousand clients. They have all lost weight one hundred out of one hundred if they've
followed the program. What happens is we start to think about the hormone side of things, and think about the genetics side things. It's definitely harder as you get older. It's definitely harder for some people with different genetics, but
it doesn't mean it's impossible. And I think what so many of us do is we blame the genetics or we blame the hormones, and it means we don't actually follow the program at ten out of ten or for long enough to see the result, and then it's just too easy for the scapegoat of the hormones or the genetics to be the out that perhaps we're looking for. It's going to be different for everybody, which is why
we say, don't compare. Your journey is your journey. Don't worry what Jenny's over there is doing, or Barrier's over there doing. You know, they might be losing weight a little bit faster or turning up a little bit.
It doesn't matter.
You're on your own journey, focusing on you trying to lose weight, and if you follow the program, you will lose weight too, but you might have to work a little bit harder or for a little bit longer than that person because they're fifteen years younger, than you, or they have more lean muscle than you, or you don't know what they're eating in the background, or you know, there's a myriad of factors that you don't know about,
which is why we focus on our own journey. We don't compare ourselves to others, and really importantly, don't blame these things as the reason you couldn't lose weight, because I promise you everybody can lose weight if they do the right thing for long enough. Our next weight loss question is from Jill.
What is it about the strength training that helps with weight loss?
So we touched on this before.
It's a great question and I'm really glad it's come from Jill.
Being female.
First of all, it makes it stronger. Also, great for our bone density, great for our posture.
You know, the way we hold ourselves, the way we.
Look esthetically, all these kind of things. But if you have lean muscle, you are burning more fat. It's as simple as that. So the more lean muscle you can build, the more you will be burning fat when you sleep, when you are sitting down, when you're on the couch witching TV, and absolutely when you are exercising. Get that muscle up to get that body fat down and don't look at them. A lot of people last making you convert fat into muscle.
It doesn't work like that.
They're completely independent physiological processes. I'm burning fat over here, I'm toning and building muscle over here, and they it's like one plus.
One equals three.
When you get them right together, that's when you transform the best and get the best results. The next question is from Matt.
I've reduced the carbs in my diet and I'm also exercising regularly, but I'm not losing weight. What could be actually going wrong.
I'm not going to cop out here. I'm not going to sit on the fence or anything or say I don't know. But there's a lot of factors from Matt that I don't know about that make it hard for me to absolutely pinpoint my answer. But when you think about the science, it sounds like Matt is still because he's staying neutral. It doesn't sound like he's gaining weight,
but it doesn't sound like he's losing weight either. It feels like he's mathematically, if you want to get to the nuts and bolts of it, bringing in as many calories as he's burning. So we have to go, well, how do we tip the scales. He either needs to exercise more often, exercise for longer, exercise harder, do a different type of exercise that challenges him more and therefore extends him more and it lifts the exercise side of things. Or he's perhaps eating well but his portion sizes are
still too big. There might be extra calories there in drinks, in particular alcohol that he's not necessarily accounting for when he sort of does his calorie tally at the end of the.
Week or the end of the day.
But the reality is, if your weight is staying the same, that is science telling you that you're effectively burning the same amount of calories on a daily basis or a weekly basis that you're consuming, and we know that something has to shift there. It doesn't have to be extreme. You don't have to add fifteen extra workouts and cut
your calories in half. You might consume two hundred calories less per day and walk for thirty minutes extra each day, and all of a sudden, you've tipped the scales by twenty percent and that weight will start to shift.
But we need.
To listen to our body, understand what's going on and learn from that and not just bang our head against a brick Walkers, we're frustrated by it. Tip the scales a little bit from a food perspective and a little bit from an exercise perspective in your favor, and you will see that weight start to shift. And our next question is from.
Kristen, I I can't spot reduce. What would be some of the best advice that you could offer in regards to the menopausal mound or the tummy that we older ladies seem to carry around with us once we hit that horrible menopausal phase in our life.
So, first of all, I recognize that voice. I think that's KP, who's one of our incredible twenty eight ers.
Lakp.
We will have a whole episode dedicated to menopause, so I won't go into too much detail about menopause just yet. But let's talk about spot reduction because you did say I can't spot reduce.
And many of our listeners won't know what that means.
Spot reduction is where this is the question, Sam, I just want to lose fat off the back of my arm, Sam, I just want to lose fat off my tummy, air omphathizer, whatever, your spot is, and physiologically it is impossible for us
to spot reduce. You can tone certain air is. You can absolutely do your tryset pushdowns and your dips and work those bingo wings or tuckshop arms or whatever we want to affectionately call them, to tone the muscles in the back of the arms, which are called the triceps, or you can do lots of core work to tone those tummy muscles. But it's the layer of fat over the top that we need to burn by burning calories,
consuming less calories, eating better, moving more. That's what it always comes back to.
Isn't it.
That will then burn that outer layer of fat off and then you can see that beautiful, sculpted, toned muscle. So you can do sit ups till the cows come home. But if your diet's no good and you're not burning enough calories, you're never going to see a six pack. Doesn't matter what happens. But to answer KP's question, don't get disheartened by the fact you've got a certain.
Area that you're want to work on.
It really comes down to doing those right things with your strength training and your cardio and nutrition for long. Because a lot of people throw in the towel, and the golden moment is probably just around the corner, you know, and it's the one you see with women a lot is, Oh, I lost all this body fat from my arms and you know, around my shoulders and my boobs. That's not where I wanted to lose it, you know. But then they keep going and they go, oh, that's just where it sort of fell off first.
And now look at me.
My legs are toned up, and my tummy's toned up, and the backs of my arms are now really sculpted. And it's just that they kept doing the exact same thing, but they did it for longer, and.
Then they're wrapped with the results.
That they get. Thank you so much as always for sending in your questions. That's what the show is all about. Real questions answered in.
Real time from real people.
So if you've got questions about health, fitness, your journey, something you'd like to share with me with the rest of our WOODLFE community, please please please send them in. You can send an audio message by clicking on the show notes, and of course make sure you follow the show for free on the iHeart Radio app. And I'll be back on Monday. If you're next motivational moment, see you soon. M hm hm hmm