If you do one thing this week...sleep to aid fat loss

Here’s a sedentary activity that might actually help you shed excess body fat: sleep.

A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine looked at 10 overweight but otherwise healthy adults who were on moderate calorie-restricted diets.

Some of the participants were assigned to sleep 5.5 hours each night in the closed research environment, while others were assigned 8.5 hours of shut-eye time.

After two weeks, the longer sleepers had lost 56 per cent more body fat than the more wakeful group.

Meanwhile, the sleep-restricted people were more inclined to lose lean body mass, which is not a desirable outcome.

The researchers also found that lack of sleep increased blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that helps stimulate hunger and food intake.

“This could explain why sleep-deprived participants also reported feeling hungrier during the study,” says researcher Plamen Penev from the University of Chicago.