Sleep well and stay slim?

Posted on Wed, 3 Nov 10

A good night’s sleep may improve your efforts to lose weight. An experimental study found that people who were sleep deprived reduced their weight loss by over 50%.

To see whether sleep affects weight loss in people who are dieting 10 overweight individuals spent 14 days in a sleep laboratory where they either had 8.5 or 5.5 hours of sleep. During the day they did no exercise and spent their hours doing home office or leisure activities.

Sleep deprivation decreased the proportion of fat loss by 55%. Those sleeping for 8.5 hours lost an average of 1.4 kg whereas in comparison those who got just 5.5 hours sleep lost only 0.6 kg. Sleep deprivation also resulted in greater muscle loss and feelings of hunger.

Traditionally efforts to reduce body weight have focused on only diet and exercise but emerging evidence suggests that adequate sleep may be equally important.

Reference:

Nedeltcheva AV, Kilkus JM, Imperial J, Schoeller DA, Penev PD. Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Ann Intern Med. 2010 Oct 5;153(7):435-41.