Less Stress, Sufficient Sleep Helps Weight Loss Routines

According to a new research, people who want to lose weight may be more successful in their attempt if they also applied methods of relieving stress. Getting sufficient sleep each night, between 6 and 8 hours, has also been demonstrated to have an impact on weight loss.

In the study, experts analyzed test subjects who had expressed their desire to lose around 10 pounds at the beginning of the experiment. Among participants, those who were less stressed, and who slept no more than 8 hours per night, were the most likely to succeed in their endeavor.

The 500 individuals the team analyzed where all from Oregon and Washington. The purpose of the study was to determine the influence that watching TV, sitting at the computer, depression, stress and sleep had on losing weight.

In other investigations, experts established that all of these factors were directly correlated to a person's risk of becoming obese. However, there were no studies that quantified the influence of these aspects on intended weight loss.

“This study suggests that when people are trying to lose weight, they should try to get the right amount of sleep and reduce their stress,” explains researcher Charles Elder, MD, MPH.

“Some people may just need to cut back on their schedules and get to bed earlier. Others may find that exercise can reduce stress and help them sleep,” the expert goes on to say, quoted by PsychCentral.

“For some people, mind/body techniques such as meditation also might be helpful,” says Elder, who is the lead author of the new study. He holds an appointment as an investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.

The team behind the study says that all the participants in the new study were highly motivated to lose weight, explaining that this could be a factor that influenced the overall results. Additionally, 90 percent of test subjects had attended college.

Funding for the investigation came from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The work was published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity.

Interestingly, researchers also determined that people who kept a food diary were about twice as efficient at losing weight than their peers who did not keep such a diary. Personal contacts and online support groups were also found to be very helpful for long-term weight management.