In almost all the articles you read about weight loss, the focus is on reducing the calorie intake. Indeed, all the science tells us the only way to lose weight is to simulate a famine and persuade the body to burn the fat it stored away during all the feasting. Why worry? Well, the science also tells us the more weight we carry around with us, the greater the risk of a set of diseases from diabetes, through heart disease to a number of different cancers. Ask any doctor and you will hear the depressing words, "you should lose weight". Then comes the advice on restricting the calorie intake and getting off the couch to work out. Well, that's alright so far as it goes. Now new research suggests you need to get plenty of quality sleep. Put the other way round, lack of sleep contributes to your weight problem.

This is not what you would expect. If you are active for more of the day, walking around, doing stuff, this is burning calories. Lie down for longer and you burn less calories. Stands to reason. Except, perhaps not. In the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, there's research published suggesting that lack of sleep undermines your best efforts to lose weight through dieting. The researchers recruited twelve volunteers who were healthy even though they had a high BMI. Ten made it through to the end of the study. These brave souls were monitored carefully during two periods of two weeks staying in the research center. Everything they ate and drank was measured. Their activity levels were converted into calories lost. Regular blood samples were taken to assess the levels of hormones associated with appetite and weight loss. This was all related to the participants descriptions of how much hunger they were feeling. No drugs were allowed to control appetite.

When the participants' sleep was limited to five-and-a-half hours a night, they lost less body fat than when they were allowed to sleep eight-and-a-half hours. When sleeping less, they all reported feeling more hungry. So is this "good science"? Well, it's interesting but not reliable. There are two problems. The first is the small number of participants. You can really sympathize with the researchers. They had the cost of monitoring people 24 hours over two week periods to get really precise measurements of calorie intake and weight loss. But the small number means you cannot generalize the results. To produce reliable results that tell you something about how the majority of people would react, you need several hundred people going through the trial. Second, four weeks is not a long enough time to study weight loss. People would usually spend several consecutive months on a calorie-reduced diet to judge how well the diet was working.

Nevertheless, the idea you will benefit if you get more sleep is something it costs you nothing to try. You should be limiting your calorie intake, exercising more and taking Phentermine to control your appetite. Actually spending an extra hour or so sleeping is cheaper than continuing the Phentermine. Remember those on the study felt less hunger when they got eight hours sleep.