Sleep and nutrition are two critically important factors we need to maintain when it comes to living a high performance lifestyle.
But what many of us don’t realise that these two factors do not operate in isolation. In fact the management and maintenance of sleep can often have a positive, or negative effect on our nutrition and the same is true for nutrition’s effect on sleep.
So for this episode we are going to be taking a close look at the relationship between nutrition and sleep and discovering how we can use one to improve the other and the traps that we can fall into.
In this episode I share:
- The misconception we often make about the connection between sleep and nutrition
- Just how crucial nutrition is for a good night’s sleep
- Why people overeat in the evening and why it is bad
- Why changing your food choices patterns is not about willpower or dedication
- Why a key strategy to help you leverage nutrition is to sleep better
- What markers to look for to determine if nutrition is affecting your sleep
- The role caffeine and alcohol have in our sleep
- The three main ways poor sleep can impact our nutrition
- How poor sleep physiologically makes us crave food and caffeine
Key Quotes
“When we’re sleeping poorly we’re more likely to be craving sweet foods.”
“Poor sleep can lead to overeating, or choosing unhealthy food options and poor food choices can affect our sleep.”
“The food choices we make every single day are within our control.”
Episode Resources
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
Jess (00:01.39)
Team, today I wanted to dive deep on two of my favourite topics, nutrition and sleep, and talk about the bi-directional relationship that they both have with each other. This means that both have the power to positively support and influence each other, but it also means they have the capacity to negatively influence and create a downward spiral.
Before we get into today’s episode, I’m a big believer in understanding your starting point, your behaviors, your routines, and identifying your blind spots. For this reason, I’ve created the High Performance Profile Quiz, which helps you identify whether you’re an overachiever, an all or nothing human, or a ticking time bomb. Once you know your profile, you will know your starting point, and you will be given the right next step that you need to take to elevate how you feel.
perform and function every single day. Now on that note, let’s get into today’s episode. Team, I absolutely love talking about the relationship between nutrition and sleep. I think one, it’s because I’m a foodie and a sleep enthusiast at heart, but two, it is because these are two of the only non-negotiable behaviors that human beings have to do every single day.
The only other one is breathing, and you can throw movement in there, although movement isn’t a non-negotiable, but in terms of optimizing human performance and potential, it should be. Now, the thing when I… Now, the thing I say when talking to people about nutrition and sleep is most people don’t understand that the two have the power to positively support each other. And what we do with one definitely influences the other.
Most people think that they operate in silos. And the other thing I also see is when someone’s wanting to improve behavior, such as I want to improve my sleep, they focus on that rather than knowing that the behaviors they need to shift maybe earlier in the day or in other areas of their life that can support that. So today is about increasing your awareness, helping you understand how you can hack
Jess (02:20.926)
or leverage the power of nutrition to optimize your sleep. And similarly, how you can use sleep to optimize your nutrition choices. I also want to make you aware of what happens when we’re not sleeping properly and how that actually drives you to want to eat certain foods. I’m a big believer self-awareness is one of the greatest, if not the greatest superpowers, particularly when it comes to optimizing performance.
So once you can understand how and why you are responding to something, you can then start to have the tools to put into place to change that. This is what I teach in my, this is what I work with my clients in a one-on-one capacity in, but it’s also.
but I’m also super passionate about having greater impact and giving as many people tools to implement into their lives. I see too many people riding the energy roller coaster from having good energy to crashing and burning to crawling to the finish line. And I’m here to say enough is enough. And also we don’t need to subscribe to the 4 a.m. or the 5 a.m. club to get up, win the morning, win the day.
If anything, I think it’s actually, let’s win the night to win the day because everybody sleeps and when we can start to optimize our sleep, we can start to have greater energy. We can start to have elevated energy and that goes a really long way to also giving us more consistent energy levels, as well as harnessing the power of nutrition to stabilize those blood sugar levels, elevate those energy levels and keep them there.
I covered off sleep in great, I covered off sleep and everything you need to know about optimizing your sleep in last week’s episode. So if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that one yet, it’s a really great continuation of today’s conversation.
Jess (04:39.906)
So I think a really good place to start is covering off how crucial nutrition and eating well is for a good night’s sleep. Now, most people might be surprised to find that it is a significant factor. And the thing I love about nutrition and its role with sleep is it is a controllable factor. I know that there can be a lot of competing interest with getting a good night’s sleep, depending on your life stage, depending if you have any…
whether it’s children, whether it’s noisy neighbours, whether you’re in a phase of your career where you’re needing to put in extra hours. Some of these factors are out of our control. But the food we eat, but the food choices we make every single day are within our control. That also extends to our use of caffeine, alcohol and the decisions we make around our snacks. So,
Jess (05:47.842)
Yeah, this is, so continuing on from that, Sam. The facts are sleep and nutrition can both positively and negatively impact each other. Poor sleep can lead to overeating or choosing unhealthy food options or increase our desire to reach for those unhealthy food options, such as the high sugar, the salty, the tasty, the poor nutrition quality type foods or snacks. And the other side of the coin is that
poor food choices can affect our sleep. So what we wanna do is improve the quality and the quantity of our diet so we can improve our sleep. Now, one really common behavior I see people falling into the trap of is overeating in the evening, which is often a byproduct of under eating in the morning or across the day. Now, overeating in the evening can look like a really
big dinner portion and now that is in reference to other meals that have been had across the day. The other thing that can happen is this is where the end of the day the sweet cravings tend to pop up. Pre-dinner, post-dinner, the sweet tooth, they come out and again that well now that can be a multitude of reasons. One there can be a habitual reason. This is something someone has always done and I don’t discount that.
But where I come in is often the people doing that are also the people who have room for improvement with their dietary pattern, their meal choices, and their snack choices across the day.
Most often these people are not having an afternoon snack, or if they are, it’s really just something very light, might be a piece of fruit, a Newsy bar, some cookies, a coffee, and for the people who’ve listened to previous episodes, they will know that is not a substantial everyday snack. So the thing that I wanna let you know is if you’re someone who is falling victim to that, and you’re someone who wants to change that,
Jess (07:55.346)
It’s not because you don’t have the willpower or the dedication, it’s because that’s your body and your brain’s way of saying, hey, hello, I haven’t had enough of what I need across the day. You haven’t given it to me. I’ve now got space and time and I need it ASAP. So I’m craving the sweet things so I can elevate my blood sugar levels because they’re getting low. No, sorry, that was on a ramble there.
Jess (08:22.082)
Continuing on from that, I’m glad you all said they’re getting low.
Jess (08:27.802)
And because your brain is the CEO of your body, it does not want to feel like it hasn’t had enough of what it needs. So again, this is why focusing on changing the behaviour is potentially not the right focus for yourself. What you actually need to focus on or upskill in or test and trial is changing things earlier on in the day. So…
One really key strategy to help you leverage the power of nutrition to sleep better is to look at the consistency and the frequency of meals. So this is a, so what I’m talking about here is having a meal and snack every three to four hours. So that’s looking at your day. It’s looking at when you would typically eat and it’s making sure that you don’t go too long in between each meal and snack.
that you don’t go too many hours in between each meal and snack without eating something.
Jess (09:28.25)
Now, the second point to make there is it’s not just about the timing, it’s about the composition. And this is where protein comes in again. Protein is the most satisfying satiating nutrient. And when we are consistently pulsing that across the day, it is stabilizing our blood sugar levels, it is managing our appetite, and it is also supportive of helping us sleep better. Now,
One thing I also see with people who don’t regularly pulse their protein intake, and look, this isn’t everyone, but it’s definitely a behaviour that I have noticed with multiple clients, like I’m talking hundreds of clients, is that they report poor sleep or waking up in the middle of the night. Now, that can often happen because you are hungry. And the thing I will say there is, you may or may not be identifying that.
Some people wake up reporting that they are hungry, whereas other people just find that they’re regularly waking up throughout the night. And the thing that I then challenge those clients reporting that is, okay, well, let’s look at your distribution of food. Let’s look at the timings. Let’s look at the composition. Let’s adjust that and see how you respond. Nine times out of 10, that is one of the drivers. The other side of the coin.
The other factor if you are waking up in the middle of the night around two or three could be your stress levels and your cortisol levels, which really is a topic, which really is a conversation for another day. But in the context of nutrition and sleep, the timing, the guard rails, the protein pulsing, absolutely key to helping you set yourself up for a good night’s sleep. Now,
The other thing I want to touch on here are our friends caffeine and alcohol. So caffeine, as we know, is a stimulant and most people… Caffeine is a stimulant and is something which many people are consuming. I am not against caffeine. This is not a conversation of have caffeine or don’t have caffeine, but this is an education piece on if you…
Jess (11:41.594)
are having caffeine, when to have it, and what to factor. Now, caffeine has a half-life of at least eight hours. So that means from the last time you’ve consumed it, it is still being metabolized and it is still in your bloodstream for at least the next eight hours. So the thing there that I focus on with clients, if they’re reporting an afternoon coffee,
two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock. It is making them aware that at 10, 11, or 12 o’clock at night, that caffeine is still present in their bloodstream. Now, there are some people out there that does not impact, but there are many people that does, there are many people that it does.
So a really good practice is cutting the caffeine from midday. And the other thing to mention there is even if you are someone who thinks you can have a coffee in the afternoon and you fall asleep at night with no impact, your sleep architecture, which is your sleep stages and your time in the different stages, such as your deep sleep and your REM sleep, which again, we spoke about in more detail last week, that can be impacted. And so that’s where…
It’s not just necessarily the quantity, it’s the quality. And you can gauge that from how you’re waking up and feeling, if you’re wearing a wearable, you can also use that to capture the data and look at your behavior. Don’t become obsessed, that’s not what we’re saying, but it’s just about becoming aware of your own behavior and how we can improve it.
The other one that I’ll mention there is alcohol, very commonly used as a way to relax and unwind, busy lives, lots going on, but alcohol, while a lot of people feel it helps them get to sleep, having any more than one standard drink has been shown to impact the quality of your sleep. So this is again where we’re talking about that sleep architecture.
Jess (13:47.832)
So, so if you are someone who is using alcohol to unwind at the end of the day or again just the time of the year, we’re coming up to the festive season, more Christmas parties, more catch-ups, you, more catch-ups.
you might just want to be quite mindful about your alcohol intake and your sleep. So this isn’t about not drinking, but again, if we’re just considering holistically our overall health and our performance, understanding alcohol is going to impact the quality of the sleep. If there’s multiple events on across the week, maybe it’s picking and choosing which ones that you drink at and maybe which ones you don’t or which ones you leave early for. I think,
Education is the first step in self-awareness, and then it’s thinking about your own behaviour. As I always say, choose what speaks to you. It’s not about cutting caffeine, cutting alcohol, cutting the sweets. This is not what this is about, but this is about identifying factors that can either support a better night’s sleep or inhibit them. Scan your current behaviours, think about what might be impacting yourself.
and then starting to test and trial some of these strategies. Now, that’s the majority of what I wanna cover off in terms of how nutrition impacts sleep. Let’s flip the script now. How does sleep impact nutrition? So I think the really important thing to cover off here is when we are sleeping poorly, how that impacts our nutrition and our nutrition choices.
So the reality is when we’re sleeping poorly, it can impact our nutrition or our food desires in three main ways. The first is if we are not sleeping more than six hours a night, then it can, I’m sorry. The first thing to point out is if we are sleeping poorly, it can increase our hunger, which then drives that…
Jess (15:55.094)
The first thing to point out is if we are sleeping poorly, it can increase our hunger and the likelihood of overeating. So by simply being awake for longer, our body and our brain are driving us to eat more. We need more energy. We are tired, we want to stay awake. Now, the second part to that is when we are tired and we’re not sleeping properly,
we’re less likely to be organized, to prepare our food. We’re more likely on the hamster wheel. We’re being very reactive rather than proactive. So if we at least understand, if we’re going through a phase of poor sleep, maybe if we’re a parent, or if we’ve got something else going on, we’ve got little children, there may be a phase where that is just where we are at and it’s not a controllable.
For many of you, it might just be the fact you’re not prioritizing your sleep, you’re doom scrolling in bed, and then it’s impacting your ability to get to sleep. So if that’s you, let’s stop that behavior, but I’m gonna focus on the people who may have other things going on in their lives, and they’re just going through a phase of not being able to sleep as much as they would like. This is again where this hierarchy of knowledge comes into play. So if we know we’re more likely to be hungry and overeat,
Let’s try to break that cycle as much as we can. The best way we can do that, if we come back to what I mentioned about nutrition, is to have those regular consistent meals and snacks. Let’s not go any more than three or four hours and then perpetuate that hunger. Let’s make sure we have that good amount of protein to buffer that appetite. That is absolutely fundamental to helping override that physiological process that is happening.
Now, the second point to make when we are not sleeping properly is that it can increase our cravings for sweet foods and for a quick energy boost. So this is likely why you’re reaching for that caffeine hit with that muffin at the cafe in the afternoon or the biscuits in the office tin or at home. When we are not sleeping properly, our brain and our body are tired and as we’ve touched on our brain and our body are tired and it wants an energy hit.
Jess (18:07.51)
which means it wants something sweet to pick itself up. And if we consume caffeine, it also knows, when I drink caffeine, it gives me an energy boost. So that’s why we’re driven to wanna have caffeine and sugar. Again, this is where awareness comes in. If we know that regularly having those meals and snacks is going to elevate our energy, sustain our energy, buffer our appetite, let’s focus on that to try and override that as much as possible. Because the thing is, if we…
aren’t organised, we’re not having a good breakfast, we’re not eating regularly, we’re having the caffeine and the sweets in the afternoon, that is perpetuating our poor sleep. So it very quickly leans itself to that downward spiral direction. And it really takes commitment and dedication and understanding on what you need to do to break that cycle to push the domino in the other way. Now, the third thing I wanna mention here is that
when we have a lack of sleep or we’re sleeping poorly, physiologically, one of the reasons why we are hungrier and we are craving sweet foods or reaching for the caffeine is because physiologically it messes with our hunger and our appetite hormones. So when we are sleeping poorly for an extended period of time, we start to increase our hunger hormones and we start to decrease our satiety hormones. So,
This again paints a picture on why those first two things are happening. So step one, we want to prioritise sleep. Can we start to optimise the quality and the quantity to break that cycle? But again, depending on who’s listening, what your life circumstances are, step two, which is equally as important, is what are the nutrition strategies I can put into place to support myself rather than
So again, I’m gonna come back to those three main points. I keep driving home, consistency with meals, timing in between, and composition in particular, that protein. So I really hope that paints a little bit of a picture in terms of how sleep can perpetuate our nutrition when we’re thinking more in terms of that, when we’re thinking more in terms of that downward spiral effect. From a nutrition impacting sleep, I called it out, but.
Jess (20:32.022)
When we’re sleeping poorly, there’s more of a, when we’re sleeping poorly, we’re more likely to wanna crave sweet foods, we’re more likely to be less prepared, we’re more likely to be reactive rather than proactive. And when that’s happening, that distribution of nutrition, that composition of each meal, which really sets up that nice flow of consistent food, which sets up that nice flow of consistent energy, focus.
productivity and appetite just isn’t there. The other thing is when we are buying meals and snacks on the fly, in particular breakfast and snacks, it can be really hard to hit those nutritional elements which I have spoken to you about, in particular the protein. So it’s why we wanna be prepared, it’s why we wanna have things with us.
And that doesn’t mean you spending your entire Sunday in the kitchen, but that just means maybe at the start of the week, going past Coles or Woolworths or Audi or whatever it might be, and grabbing yourself some snacks to have in the office. That means maybe ordering some meals from a meal delivery service so you’ve got it with you. It’s just when we’re not being proactive in this sense and we’re relying on what’s around us, where we are.
And also we’re relying on how we feel as that main indicator that those three things together are leading us to not make the best food choices, to start to push those dominoes in that other direction. Let’s leverage nutrition to support a better night’s sleep. And let’s sleep better to help us make those food choices we wanna make that are gonna help us have more stable energy levels, have better focus, be more productive.
get to the end of the week with energy reserves in the tank rather than crawling to the finish line. So team, on that note, I’d really love to know which of these has spoken to you today. Are you leveraging nutrition to support sleep? Are you sleeping good and you’re finding it’s really supporting your nutrition choices? Or are you in a cycle where you’re not sleeping, your sleep could be better?
Jess (22:52.722)
and it’s impacting your nutrition choices. This is all about awareness, this is all about education. As I mentioned before, the high performance profile quiz takes you through some of these questions. It touches on sleep, it touches on nutrition choices. So if you haven’t done it, I’d really encourage you to click the link in the show notes, take the quiz, see where you’re at. Awareness is the first step to behavior change.
Jess (25:13.442)
So team, if you’re keen on some personalized support to elevate your nutrition, your sleep, your overall performance, have someone come in, look at your current routine, look at your lifestyle, look at those opportunities to put some easy tactical and practical strategies proven to elevate how you feel, perform and function. Click the link in my show notes, you can get information on my coaching and my strategy sessions.
Jess (25:43.918)
Otherwise team, I’ll be back again for a new episode next week helping high performers, sorry. Team to let you know in coming episodes, I’m going to start having some guests on. So we’re gonna be, team in the coming episodes, we’re going to start to be having some guests. So stay tuned for not only some solo episodes, but some episodes with some guests and some high performing individuals where you can learn how.
they not only put strategies in place to get them to the top, but what they’re doing to keep them there. On that note, I’ll see you, hmm, what they’re doing to keep, oh my God. This is what happens when you don’t have a script, Sam. Fuck, all right.
If you’d like any more information, you can check out the show notes. Otherwise, I’ll be back again next week for a new episode helping high performers not only get to the top, but stay there.