One of the most ignored habits could really help people trying to lose weight without exercise or fasting – Experts

This often-overlooked and simple habit could be quite beneficial to people who are trying to lose weight without making any other lifestyle adjustments, according to specialists.

Obesity has become a big public health issue.  The obesity pandemic appears to be linked to a societal trend of sleeping less during the last several decades. One-third of the population in the United States, for example, reported not receiving the required 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. 2-4 Sleeping less than 7 hours each night on a regular basis is linked to negative health outcomes, according to substantial evidence.

However, it’s unclear whether increasing sleep duration is a viable technique for preventing or reversing obesity. Despite the fact that sleep hygiene education is recommended by obesity experts, most health professionals and patients do not include getting enough sleep as part of their obesity-fighting strategy.

According to Esra Tasali, MD, Director of the UChicago Sleep Center at the University of Chicago Medicine, understanding the underlying reasons of obesity and how to prevent it is the greatest method to combat the obesity pandemic.

“The current obesity epidemic, according to experts, is mostly explained by an increase in caloric intake, rather than lack of exercise” she says.

This new study looks at how getting enough sleep influences caloric intake in a real-world environment could transform the way we think about weight loss.

Tasali and her colleagues at UChicago and the University of Wisconsin–Madison discovered that after a personalized sleep hygiene counseling session, young, overweight adults who typically slept fewer than 6.5 hours per night were able to increase their sleep duration by an average of 1.2 hours per night in a randomized clinical trial with 80 adults published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The sleep intervention was designed to enhance sleep duration to 8.5 hours, and participants’ overall caloric intake was lowered by an average of 270 kcal (calories) per day when compared to controls.

“Over the years, we and others have shown that sleep restriction has an effect on appetite regulation that leads to increased food intake, and thus puts you at risk for weight gain over time,” adds Tasali. “More recently, the question that everyone was asking was, ‘Well, if this is what happens with sleep loss, can we extend sleep and reverse some of these adverse outcomes?”

The current study not only looks at the effects of sleep deprivation on calorie consumption, but it also does so in a real-world situation, with no manipulation or control over the subjects’ eating habits. Participants slept on their own beds, used wearable monitors to track their sleep, and generally lived their normal lives with no dietary or exercise restrictions.

“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,” according to Tasali. “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.”

Individuals who extended their sleep duration were able to cut their caloric intake by an average of 270 kcal per day, equating to around 12 kg (26 lbs) of weight loss over three years assuming the results lasted for a long time.

Despite the fact that no other lifestyle adjustments were prescribed, most individuals ate much less, with some eating as little as 500 fewer calories per day.

The participants were only in the trial for four weeks altogether, with two weeks spent gathering baseline data on sleep and calorie consumption and two weeks spent monitoring the effects of the sleep intervention.

“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,” says Tasali. 

“Now we’ve shown that in real life, without making any other lifestyle changes, you can extend your sleep and eat fewer calories. This could really help people trying to lose weight.”

Source:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.8098

Image Credit: Getty

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