BETTER INCLUDE SLEEPING AS PART OF YOUR WEIGHT LOSS DIET

Lack of Sleep Could Be the Reason Why You Aren't Losing Weight on Your Diet

So you put on some weight over the holidays -- going to several parties, enjoying the festivities with friends by partaking in several cocktails, indulging in delicacies you normally don't allow yourself to have, and nibbling out of holiday candy dishes like a person possessed. Come on, life isn't worth living if you can't enjoy yourself every once in a while; right? But somehow December and January's splurges snowballed into continued out-of-control eating in both February and March. Ugh! 

It's April and somehow you are still carrying around December and January's "party pounds!" Why haven't you gotten rid of that belly bulge and those jiggly thighs yet even though you signed back up at the gym and have been taking that Orange Theory class twice a week? Could it be a lack of sleep that's stopping you from losing that winter weight?

According to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine by the University of Chicago Sleep Research Laboratory, sleep loss can alter energy intake and expenditure in overweight individuals. Grant money was given by the National Institute of Health to help fund the study which was conducted at UC's Sleep Lab to determine whether sleep restriction diminished the effects of a reduced-calorie weight-loss diet on excess adiposity (fancy speak for people who had too much fat on their bodies). 

The sleep study was conducted for 14 days and involved restricting the amount of sleep of overweight, non-smoking dieters. The control group were permitted to sleep 8.5 hours per night and the experimental group were limited to 5.5 hours per night. The primary measure to determine the effects of restricted sleep on weight loss was loss of fat and fat-free body mass (lean muscle). A secondary measure was also used to ascertain the effects of shorter night's rest were changes in hunger, energy expenditure, 24-hour metabolic hormone concentrations, and changes in substrate utilization (protein, fat, or carbs).

The results of this study will make you want to hit-the-sack early instead of watching your favorite late night show or playing another game of Foosball with your buds. Reduction in sleep decreased the proportion of weight lost as FAT by as much as 55% (3.08 lbs vs 1.32 lbs in the 8.5 hour a night group and the 5.5 hour per night group, respectively). And if NOT losing weight loss from fat wasn't bad enough, it was also discovered that the overweight dieters in the study who were only permitted to sleep 5.5 hours per night experienced a loss of lean-muscle mass by 60% (5.28 lbs vs 3.3 lbs in the 5.5 hour participants and the 8.5 hour, respectively). 

Dieting by decreasing overall daily caloric intake always causes an average muscle loss of ~10%, unless the dieter is using an every-other-day fasting diet strategy which has been shown in laboratory research to only cause a ~1% muscle loss (See Klempel MC, et al, Alternate day fasting (ADF) with a high-fat diet produces similar weight loss and cardio-protection as ADF with a low-fat diet, Metabolism (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2012.07.002). Losing six times the amount of lean-muscle mass while disciplining yourself like a champ by strictly eating clean & cutting out all the junk food just because you didn't get enough sleep would be CRUSHING! I would throw my scale in the street and run it over 20 times on my way to the store to buy a gallon of Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip while ranting about how all my dieting was for nothing.

Now that you and I know that sleeping is a necessary part of our dieting strategy, let's make it our top priority after drinking enough pure water, cutting back on carbs, and limiting our intake of processed food and sugar to get 8.5 hours of sleep each night. I would rather sleep my fat away then get up an hour early and go to the gym to climb up a 1,000 stairs anyway. Sleep over the stair climbing sounds like music to my ears -- make that snores.

As always, thanks so much for reading.

--Bell Gia

Nutrition and Fitness Expert

Reference: Ann Intern Med. 5 October 2010, 153(7):435-441 dos:10.7326/0003-4819-153-7-201010050-00006.