A good night’s sleep may make it easier to stick to exercise and diet goals, study finds
Preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2023 suggests that people who get regular and uninterrupted sleep are more successful at sticking to their exercise and diet plans while trying to lose weight.
The researchers found that good sleep health was associated with higher rates of attendance at group interval sessions, adherence to caloric intake goals and improvement in time spent performing moderate-vigorous physical activity. The researchers examined 125 adults with overweight or obesity over 12 months in a weight loss program that included measurements of sleep habits through patient questionnaires, sleep diaries and wrist-worn devices.
They measured adherence to the program by percentage of group intervention sessions attended, percentage of days that participants ate between 85-115% of their recommended daily calories, and change in daily duration of moderate or vigorous physical activity.
The study’s limitations include that it did not incorporate any intervention to help participants improve their sleep, that the study sample was not recruited based upon participants’ sleep health characteristics, and that the overall sample population had relatively good sleep health at baseline. Additionally, the sample was primarily white and female, so it is unclear whether these results are generalisable to different population groups.
Overall, the preliminary research suggests that sleep may play a key role in promoting self-control and making healthy choices, highlighting the need for public health efforts to promote healthy sleep habits and the importance of getting enough sleep for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
