Bodybuilding - Sleep Or Lose Muscle

If you've been noticing some lagging gains, maybe you should sleep more.
Or actually sleep better.
If you wake up in the middle of the night to eat food/supplements, I'd recommend you have continuous sleep each night for a few weeks and see if you get better muscle gains.
While it's important to keep your body in an anti-catabolic sleep, your body releases many growth hormones during your deep sleep so you could be losing on some serious muscle gains if you disturb your sleep process.
What's that you say? You can't fall asleep? Here's a few tips: 1.
Take Deep Breaths - Take a deep breath and inhale for a count of 10 and exhale after a count of 10.
After 10 times of this, your body should be plenty relaxed.
2.
Play Dead - All you have to do is just stop moving.
Literally.
Don't scratch your leg, rub your eyes, or anything else.
It might be a little hard at first, but after 5 minutes you'll be sleeping like a baby.
3.
Stretch It Out - If you like having your body nice and loose right before you sleep, you may want to try stretching for a few minutes.
I like to do a nice back stretch and a few leg stretch before I go to sleep sometimes.
The key is to get yourself nice and relaxed.
Finally, if you're worried about losing muscle during your sleep.
Drink a casein supplement right before you sleep.
Although you normally want fast-acting protein like whey, casein's slow dissolving characteristic makes it the perfect protein to have right before you sleep.