The following is an excerpt of an interview I did for The Elite Body, with Vince Delmonte, author of No Nonsense Muscle Building. Vince was talking about how hormones impact muscle growth and weight loss.
Jim: So seeing how hormone’s influence muscle growth and weight loss, what are some natural ways to stimulate those hormones?
Vince: That’s a great question. Let’s look at three things – training, lifestyle and nutrition. Let’s start off with things people might miss on lifestyle. The reality is that when training, you’re only in the gym a couple of hours a week. The majority of the time you’re outside of the gym. So sleeping eight hours a night is very important. These are the things that can’t really get dressed up as sexy and they can’t market on the cover of a magazine, “Sleep Eight Hours a Night.”
People underestimate this stuff. Going to bed earlier I found was one of the big things for me in recovery and being able to train harder the next day. I would let that kick in. So I recommend that everybody – I’m just painting a perfect situation. Whether you can do this or you can’t, that’s up to the person listening to the call to make that commitment and lifestyle change.
If you can get to bed closer to 10:30/11:00 each night, that’s going to help a lot. They say for every hour of sleep you can get before midnight, it’s almost like the equivalent of two hours sleep. I tested this out. I know it’s amazing. You wake up earlier and you’re able to start your first meal earlier. You’re able to finish your last meal earlier. Everything just seems to work a lot better. Your body is able to start building muscle quicker.
That’s going to produce growth hormone. That’s one of the hormones that are going to allow you to build muscle and aid in weight loss.
Also minimizing stress in your life. Looking at the relationships you’re in; the career you’re in; the social settings you’re in; how late are you staying up – all those little things – the one isolated incident might not make a big difference. It’s what happens when going to bed at 2:00/3:00 in the morning occurs two or three nights a week over a course of six to nine months.
That’s where the damage is. So that’s lifestyle. Alcohol too – that’s another thing. A lot of people ask me, “Vince, can I drink on the weekends?” Of course you can drink, but is it going to get you closer to your goal or further from your goal? It all comes down to how serious you are about the weight loss.
If I’m getting ready for a show, the booze has got to go. If I’m just wishy washy; I’m happy with how I look and I’m just trying to relieve some stress and that, well then sure. A drink here and there isn’t going to be a big deal. So you have to ask yourself how serious you are and then you’ll be able to start answering these questions better for yourself. That’s lifestyle.
Jim: That’s really interesting. I like again just kind of expanding on what people already know. Everyone knows if you sleep better it’s good for you. It sounds like there’s a scientific reason that it literally affects the hormones in your body when you sleep more. That’s pretty important.
