Regular, uninterrupted sleep helps in sticking to exercise and diet plans
Washington (US), March 20: People who reported getting regular, uninterrupted sleep did a better job sticking to their exercise and diet plans while trying to lose weight, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle, and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2023.
Christopher E. Kline, PhD, an associate professor in the department of health and human development at the University of Pittsburgh, stated: "Focusing on obtaining good sleep -- seven to nine hours at night with a regular wake time along with waking refreshed and being alert throughout the day -- may be an important behaviour that helps people stick with their physical activity and dietary modification goals."
"A previous study of ours reported that better sleep health was associated with a significantly greater loss of body weight and fat among participants in a year-long, behavioural weight loss program."
The researchers wanted to know if good sleep health was related to how well people followed the various lifestyle changes prescribed in a 12-month weight loss programme. The weight-loss programme enrolled 125 adults (average age 50 years, 91% female, 81% white) who were overweight or obese (body mass index 27-44) and did not have any medical conditions that required medical supervision of their diet or physical activity.
Patient questionnaires, a sleep diary, and 7-day readings from a wrist-worn device that recorded sleep, waking activity, and rest were used to assess sleep habits at the start of the programme. These measures were used to assign a "good" or "poor" rating to each participant on six aspects of sleep: regularity, satisfaction, alertness, timing, efficiency (the percentage of time spent in bed when actually asleep), and duration. Each participant received a composite sleep health score of 0-6, with one point awarded for each "good" measure of sleep health, with higher scores indicating better levels of sleep health.
The percentage of group intervention sessions attended, the percentage of days each participant ate between 85-115% of their recommended daily calories, and the change in the daily duration of moderate or vigorous physical activity were used to assess adherence to the weight loss programme. At the start of the study, at 6 months, and 12 months, participants had an average sleep health score of 4.5 out of 6.
Participants self-reported their caloric intake using a phone app each day, and researchers measured their physical activity with an accelerometer worn at the waist for one week at the start of the study, six months, and twelve months.
In the first six months, participants attended 79% of group sessions and 62% of group sessions in the second six months.
In the first six months, 36% of participants met their daily caloric intake goals, while 21% met their goals in the second six months.
Participants increased their total daily time spent in moderate-vigorous activity by 8.7 minutes in the first six months but decreased by 3.7 minutes in the second.
"As one continues in a long-term behavioural weight loss intervention, it's normal for the adherence to weight loss behaviours to decrease."
Furthermore, while there was an association between improved sleep health and increased physical activity, it was not strong enough to be statistically significant, which means that researchers cannot rule out the possibility that the results were due to chance.
"We had hypothesized that sleep would be associated with lifestyle modification; however, we didn't expect to see an association between sleep health and all three of our measures of lifestyle modification," he said.
- ANI