Hi All,

I am coming into a very busy work week... I'll be getting home late most nights this week. If I work out when I get home, I am up for hours... So, my sleep suffers. If I don't work out, then I can sleep better but I don't have any other time during the day to fit in the workout.

I know both sleep and exercise are important for weight loss -- and over the long term, I make both a priority. But, in the short term (just over the next week), do you think it is better to make time for exercise or sleep??

Sarah

Is there any way to get your exercise done first thing in the morning? That is what works the best for me.

hands down go for the sleep. lack of sleep can cause weight gain and there is no point exercising if you can't properly recover.

I think the right answer is "sleep" but I tend to go with exercise.

I'd go for sleep, too. But I'd also try going for mini-workouts that I can do for five minutes during coffee breaks or lunch breaks if I can squeeze it in.

If it's really just a week, I say sleep - no question. If you're talking about the long term, or if these busy weeks come up often, like once a month, I think you'll need to think about rearranging your routine to fit in exercise earlier in the day. I sympathize as I am totally not a morning person and would have a really horrible time trying to exercise before work. But, if you can't manage it after work, you'll have to do it some other time if you want to do it.

I would go for sleep too.

I'm going with sleep too. If you work out tired you are going to be miserable and who wants to equate misery with exercise? At least, more than we already do? :-) Get some rest, get through the week eating and sleeping well and restart next week.

Sleep.... and sneak in exercise by climbing stairs or parking far away!

Thanks for all of the feedback! It sounds like you all generally agree to get the sleep that I need to get through the week. I love the idea of trying to find pockets of time to exercise. I didn't think of that, but I can definitely take 5 minutes here and there to get a little. It will probably help with the stress as well! Can't WAIT until Friday!

Sleep. Exercise is important but in this case, the benefits of sleep outweigh those of exercise.
Try doing little things whenever you have a moment - somebody mentioned recently that every time she goes to the washsroom, she does 10 squats in the stall. Something like that. If you work in a multi-storey building, run up and down the stairs. You can always squeeze in a few repeats of something if you really try.

If it's just for one week, I vote for sleep too.

SLEEP! For sure!! Being over-tired is the very first thing that sets me up for what I will call "stupid hunger", like nothing I eat will satisfy me because it's sleep I need, not food. I don't know why I confuse those things, but if I'm tired, my body wants to eat, eat, eat! Well actually I do know a little bit about why, it has to do with the hormones ghrelin and leptin, satiety and hunger hormones that go totally out of whack with sleep deprivation.

Getting my sleep apnea treated has been THE catalyst for my successful appetite control. Also, I saw a story on 60 minutes a couple years ago that has really stuck with me. They took some normal-weight people and put them in a lab where they sleep restricted them, allowed them only 4 hours of sleep per night for a week. By the end of ONE week, almost all of them were consuming a considerable increase in calories, they were ordering pizza and burgers and stuffing themselves. By the end of ONE week, several of them were showing pre-diabetic level blood sugars when previously their numbers were on target.

The whole thing really made me think, because I'm a nurse at a hospital and worked night shift for several years. I didn't handle it well AT ALL, I'm sure because of my accompanying sleep apnea. But I gained about 100 lbs in the last 3 years or so of it. And very interesting to me was that a disproportionate amount of the mid-20s/normal weight gals I worked with on night shift who got pregnant were getting gestational diabetes. My anecdotal evidence that sleep is RIGHT up there with healthy diet and exercise for weight control and health.

SLEEP! Oh yeah, sleep, sleep, sleep!! Woo woo, sleep! Get your sleep, people!

It depends really, as someone stated see if you can get it in the morning. With me if I wake up really early in the morning and exercise, I'll be able to fall back to sleep right away, so it doesn't work for me. But if I'm tired in the afternoon and workout it'll wake me up...but if I work out later on at night, it will either put me to sleep or keep me awake. My body is screwy like that. So I'd say sleep is best, then try and figure out if early morning workout better for you.