New Year's Weight Loss

If You're Planning To Lose Weight In The New Year, Experts Say "Think Sleep"

By Tracee Cornforth

If you are like millions of other Americans, your number one New Year's Resolution is probably to lose weight; however, whether you succeed or not may depend on how much good sleep you get each night. According to recent studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet, sleep loss tends to increase hunger and affects the body's metabolism making it difficult to maintain weight loss or lose weight.

A hormone called cortisol which controls appetite has been shown to be affected by sleep loss. This causes you to still feel hungry despite the fact that you have consumed an adequate amount of food. Other ways that sleep loss affects your ability to lose and maintain weight loss include:

Interference with carbohydrate metabolism which may cause high blood glucose levels.
Excess amounts of glucose encourages the overproduction of insulin which leads to the storage of excess body fat, as well as lead to insulin resistance (a significant sign of adult-onset diabetes.
According to Michael Thorpy, MD, director of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, "Sleep loss is associated with striking alterations in hormone levels that regulate the appetite and may be a contributing factor to obesity. Any American making a resolution to lose weight in the New Year should probably consider a parallel commitment for getting more sleep."

An estimated 40 percent of Americans promise to lose weight in the New Year; however, almost 90 percent of those who responded to a nationwide survey reported either occasional or no success losing weight. In fact, nearly half of the respondents reported losing very little weight or, unfortunately, gaining weight instead.

How Sleep Loss Affects Body Weight

Not only does quanity of sleep affect weight, loss of sleep quality can also affect your weight. An example of this is seen in the fact that decreased amounts of restorative deep or slow-wave sleep have been associated with significantly reduced levels of growth hormone. Growth hormone is a protein that helps the body regulate the proportions of fat and muscle in adults.

"Sleep loss disrupts a complex and interwoven series of metabolic and hormonal processes and may be a contributing factor to obesity," said John Winkelman, MD, Ph.D., medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "What most people do not realize is that better sleep habits may be instrumental to the success of any weight management plan."

Sleeplessness in America

Are you getting enough sleep? If you are not, you are not alone. According to a poll sponsored by the National Sleep Foundation, only 30 percent of adults reported getting eight or more hours of sleep on weeknights; while 52 percent reported getting eight or more hours of sleep on weekend nights. For many of you, this lack of adequate sleep may be elective in order to increase your work or free time. A majority of respondents to the poll also suffer from sleep disorders which affect both the quantify and quality of their sleep. Almost three quarters (74 percent) experienced at least one symptom of a sleep disorder on two or more nights each week. Insomnia was defined as having any one of the following symptoms:

difficulty falling asleep
waking often during the night
waking up to early in the morning and being unable to go back to sleep
waking up in the morning feeling unrested
Over half (58 percent) of the poll respondents reported at least one symptom of insomnia on two or more nights of the week.

"People who experience sleep disturbances for more than a few weeks should see their doctor," said Thorpy. "In addition to making behavioral and lifestyle modifications, there are newer prescription sleep medications that can help individuals fall asleep quickly and increase their total sleep time with minimal next-day effects."

Adjusting your sleep habits will help you to lose weight in the New Year, or anytime, according to sleep experts. Here are a few tips that can help you keep your weight loss resolution.

1. Don't eat right before bed, but make sure you've eaten a good dinner so you don't go to bed hungry.

2. Regular exercise is key to weight loss; however, make sure you exercise at least three hours before you go to bed.

3. Find a relaxing bedtime routine and stick with it--it could be something as simple as a warm bath or reading a book (a really boring book such as a how-to manual is almost guaranteed to put you to sleep fast).

4. Caffeine, cigarettes, and alcoholic beverages don't help you sleep, in fact they may actually make sleep impossible, so avoid these substances late in the afternoon and evening.

5. Don't take a daytime nap if you have trouble sleeping at night.

6. Make your bedroom a pleasant place for sleeping. Set your thermostat to a temperature you find comfortable and make your room as dark and quiet as possible.

7. If you have been trying to sleep for 30 minutes and are still awake, get out of bed. Go in another room and do something relaxing until you feel like you are sleepy enough to go to sleep.

8. See your health care provider if sleep problems continue for more than a few weeks, or if sleep loss interferes with your daily life.

Source: PR Newswire