They were then monitored over a year, with accelerometers used to measure sleep before and after the diet and at weeks 13, 26 and 52. Participants had a BMI of between 32 and 43 before the start of the study and they lost 12 per cent of body fat, on average.
The study, presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Maastricht, Netherlands, tracked 195 adults after an eight-week diet. More than a third of UK and US adults sleep less than six or seven hours per night because of stress, screens and the blurring or work-life boundaries. People who slept for less than six hours per night saw their BMI score increase by 1.3 points after a year, compared with those who slept for more than six hours. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark examined sleep duration and quality among nearly 200 obese adults for a year.
Sleeping at least six hours a night is crucial to keeping your weight under control, a study claimed today.
