Stay slim with a good night’s sleep Missing out on sleep could lead to weight gain as it causes us to eat more than our normal appetite

Stay slim with a good night’s sleep

Missing out on sleep could lead to weight gain as it causes us to eat more than our normal appetite

If your weight refuses to drop despite all your efforts, then those sleepless nights could be the culprit. A new study shows that lack of sleep can boost hunger signals in the brain and raise the levels of the hormones that affect appetite, causing us to eat more than we should.
As per the editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, sleep habits should be considered along with diet and exercise in designing programs to help obese people lose weight. There is strong evidence that not enough sleep contributes to the obesity epidemic, and considering that sleep gets less attention than diet and exercise, that may be partly why many weight-loss efforts fail, say the researchers.

Among many studies, the scientists point to a 2010 study from the University of Chicago (published in the Annals of Internal Medicine) in which participants were randomly assigned to sleep either 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours every night in a sleep lab for 14 days. Subjects reduced their calorie intake by 680 calories. Those who slept 5.5 hours lost 55 per cent less body fat, and 60 per cent more of their lean body mass than those who dozed longer.
Further research could offer ways people could get more sleep, such as trimming back on television viewing in the evening, to see whether it affects diet success, the researchers added.