Sleep Habits And Weight Loss

I was very excited when I heard this on Fox 2 news this morning in their Sleep Habits and Weight Loss segment. Randi Naughton interviewed Dr. Joseph OJile from the Clayton Sleep Institute. Over the years I have heard about the relationship between sleep and losing or maintaining weight loss. Dr. Ojile has appeared on various news segments dealing with various sleep issues. This morning this one, in particular, piqued my interest because it frustrates me how people concerned about losing weight waste hundreds and thousands of dollars on fad diets, exercise, and even diet pills. Here’s what Dr. Ojile had to say.

There is a Relationship Between Weight Gain and Sleep…

…so we need to make this part of our everyday lives. Studies say that people who sleep less affects the hormones that cause them to eat suppress appetites are affected and altered. The hormones that cause you to eat go up and the ones that suppress ones appetite tends to go down. This is exciting because a person can make sleep part of their total plan to lose weight or keeping weight down getting enough sleep should be part of that plan.  Sleep alone will not make you lose weight but if you couple that with a good diet and good exercise the affects will be amplified in addition over the years it’s clear that people that don’t sleep enough have much higher rates of obesity. As far as who’s at risk there has been a real focus on younger people so when it comes to our children and young adults we need to start bringing sleep into their lifestyle management with them and discussing the value of them getting enough sleep and practicing good sleep habits because they tend to not want to listen us as parents about their grades but if we tell them they may not look quite as good in the mirror then they seem to give us a little more attention. Making this awareness part of their daily lives, the schools and were hopeful that even reaching out to athletic trainers the gyms. For example professional athletes the Olympians and so forth they understand the value of sleep and the full incorporate that into their training programs. There isn’t any reason why those of us that are merely fitness exercisers shouldn’t have the same benefit of that since in a sense that has been road tested by the professional athletes.

We couldn’t agree more Dr. Ojile – thanks for the great advice. We would only add that 7-8 hours of sleep is the recommended amount of sleep to get per night.