Better Sleep Promotes Weight Loss

Better sleep has been found to help people cut calories, suggests a small clinical trial in the US.

The study, although not looking specifically at weight loss, discovered a fall in calories among participants, with those who slept for less than 6.5 hours a night shedding 270 calories, on average, daily when they got an extra 1.2 hours of kip.

Using trialists aged 21 to 40, with a body mass index between 25 and 29.9 and thus classed as overweight, the trial did not ask volunteers to restrict diets or change exercise routines, but half of the participants received personalised sleep hygiene counselling aimed at extending sleep.

The results, published in Jama Internal Medicine, suggested this small improvement in sleep patterns change can lead to a greater chance of weight loss.

Dr Esra Tasali, of the University of Chicago’s sleep centre, said in The Guardian; “Most other studies on this topic in labs are short-lived, for a couple of days, and food intake is measured by how much participants consume from an offered diet.

“In our study we only manipulated sleep and had the participants eat whatever they wanted, with no food logging or anything else to track their nutrition by themselves.

“If healthy sleep habits are maintained over longer duration, this would lead to clinically important weight loss over time.

“Many people are working hard to find ways to decrease their caloric intake to lose weight – well, just by sleeping more, you may be able to reduce it substantially.”