If traditional weight-loss diets have failed you, you might just try hitting the sack.
Growing evidence has linked healthy weight with getting adequate sleep, and in a new report presented at the American Heart Association’s annual Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference, researchers found that sleep deprivation is associated with overeating. In the study, people who were sleep deprived ate more than 500 additional calories daily.
That’s a lot of calories. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that over time, the excess consumption can translate into unwanted pounds — though the current study was small and short-term and did not measure participants’ long-term changes in weight.
The study’s lead author, Virend Somers, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, studied 17 healthy but sedentary men and women in a lab clinic for 11 days and nights. The participants agreed to spend the entire study period at the facility, where researchers recorded their every movement, through a special monitor the participants wore, and tallied everything they ate, either from a cupboard in their room or food they ordered. That way, Somers and his team could make relatively accurate calculations of how much energy the participants were taking in in the form of calories and how much they were burning off through activities like walking. full story
