More Evidence of a Link Between Sleep and Successful Dieting

A new study out this week is providing more support to the idea that good sleep can mean a slimmer you.

The research, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, said cutting your sleep time from 8.5 hours to 5.5 hours causes you to lose proportionally less fat.   The small study looked at 10 overweight dieters.  All cut their caloric intake by 10%, and all lost a comparable amount of weight – but the type of weight they lost was very different, depending on how long they slept.

For dieters who had a full night’s worth, more than half of the weight they lost was fat. But when the researchers cut three hours off their bedtime, only a quarter of the weight the study participants lost was fat. That means the other 75% being burned was nonfat mass – such as protein, valuable building blocks of muscle and other body tissues.  Generally the idea of a diet is to lose fat, not muscle.

Source: Los Angeles Times