Showering Before Bed Can Help You Lose Weight
If you’re a morning shower person, you’re not alone — it offers quite the energizing boost.
But have you ever considered taking a shower in the evening instead? Showering at night has a host of benefits — one in particular leading to weight loss.
When you take a shower before bed, you activate your body’s thermostat, causing you to fall asleep faster. You sleep best when your body is cooled down! And better sleep means lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is a fat-storage hormone.
If your body cools down, you’ll stimulate brown fat — a kind of fat found at the back of the neck that helps your body burn more calories. Actually, you can burn up to 275 calories in three hours when stimulating brown fat, so there’s that!
By studying the habits of some of the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes who live much the way humans have for thousands of years, a team of scientists at UCLA noted that temperature drops were an important sleep cue for our paleolithic ancestors.
Although you may not be sleeping under the stars, you can create the same sunset-like temp drop by taking a hot shower, or bubble bath with lavender aromatherapy… either will do.
The dip might actually lead to more pound-shedding shuteye.
