If your diet is not going as well as you expected, the problem may not be your food choices or exercise habits. It can be your sleeping habits. Sleep loss can make the best attempts to lose weight, according to new research in the October 5 edition of the Anais of Internal Medicine.
. Overweight adults lost 55% less fat when they have 5.5 hours of sleep per night, compared to when they slept for 8.5 hours per night, the new study showed.
"Sleep loss can prevent fat loss and make the body more stupid when it comes to using fat as fuel," explains Plamen Penev, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Instead, the body burns lean body mass, he says. Weight loss can be the same at the end of the day, but people who have adequate sleep lose more fat than their counterparts that are deprived of sleep.
. "Sleep loss decreases fat loss and accelerates undesirable loss of lean body mass, which does not help body burning energy or calories," he says. "Sleep loss is accompanied by an increase in hunger that makes it less likely that you can adhere to the diet."
In general, "Losing weight becomes a harder fight when you do not get suitable sleep," says WebMD.
Hack Weight Loss - Sleep Loss Hampers Weight Loss Efforts
The new study of 10 adults with overweight was performed in two two-week intervals. Participants ate a low calorie diet and were scheduled to sleep for 8.5 hours per night for two weeks and for 5.5 hours per night for two weeks. Researchers have measured their weight loss, fat loss and fat-free body mass.
During the longest sleep intervention, the average participants are about 7 hours and 25 minutes of sleep per night while they slept for 5 hours and 14 minutes during shortened sleep intervention.
Men and women lost 55% less body fat and were domesticated at night during the weeks of 5.5 hours, the study showed.
Participants lost about 6.6 pounds during each intervention of two weeks. The main difference was in terms of fat loss. During the two weeks in which they have adequate sleep, men and women lost 3.1 kilos of fat and 3.3 pounds of fat-free body mass (which was mostly composed of protein). By contrast, men and women have lost 1.3 pounds of fat and 5.3 pounds of fat free mass when they slept in shorter times, the researchers report.
Participants saw close to an increase of 10 points their hormone levels of the Ghrelin appetite for the two weeks when sleep was restricted at 5.5 hours per night. Ghrelin levels rose from 75 nanograms per liter of blood (NG / L) at 84 ng / l, the study showed.
The new discoveries make sense to Michael Breus, PhD, beauty author with sleep and clinical director of the sleep division for the Health of Arrowhead in Glendale, Ariz.
. Leptin and Ghrelin are two key hormones involved in the modulation of the appetite, it explains. Leptin is the hormone "stop" that says to stop eating when it is full; Ghrelin is the hormone "go" that tells you to keep eating.
"When you are not getting enough, leptin, stop hormone, descends and ghrelin, go hormone, increases," he says. Less "Stop" and more "Go" can result in weight gain or prevent weight loss, Breus explains.
"The longer you sleep, less time you have to eat," he adds.
"If you are trying to lose weight, sleep a priority, and make sure you get more than seven hours of sleep per night," he says.
Improve sleep hygiene can help.
"Do not eat for four hours before bed because sleeping decreases your metabolism," he says. "Do not drink any caffeine after 2:30 pm. And use the room just to sleep," says Breus.
"Exercise is good for weight loss and better sleep, just do not do it right before bed because you can keep it at night," he says.
"If you are trying to diet and combine it with something that changes your metabolism to start losing the protein instead of fat, it will be more difficult to diet, and you will have to diet more difficult to get the same benefit" , Says David M. Rapoport, MD, associate professor of medicine and director of the Sleep Medicine program at NYU Medicine School in New York.
Still: "You can not replace sleep for less diet and exercise, but for any effort, you will have more bang for your money, being rested," he says.
The current society 24/7, where people are eternally connected and the loss of sleep is considered a distinctive of honor can play a role in the epidemic of obesity, says rapoport. "It is not the underlying cause of why we are becoming an obese society, but can play a role."
