Sleep quality may affect adherence to exercise, diet goals in those trying to lose weight
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Improved domains of sleep quality may improve patients’ ability to adhere to components of a behavioral weight-loss intervention, including exercise and diet goals, a speaker reported.
“Focusing on obtaining good sleep — 7 to 9 hours at night with a regular wake time along with waking refreshed and being alert throughout the day — may be an important behavior that helps people stick with their physical activity and dietary modification goals,” Christopher E. Kline, PhD, associate professor in the department of health and human development at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a press release. “A previous study of ours reported that better sleep health was associated with a significantly greater loss of body weight and fat among participants in a year-long, behavioral weight loss program.”
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For this study, 125 adults with overweight or obesity (mean age, 50.3 years; 91% women; 81% white) participated in a 12-month behavioral weight-loss intervention.
To assess the relationship between sleep health and measures of lifestyle modification in this cohort, the researchers examined six dimensions of sleep using validated questionnaires and actigraphy: regularity, satisfaction, alertness, timing, efficiency and duration.
Sleep dimensions were dichotomized as “good” and “poor” sleep and a composite score was calculated based upon the number of good individual dimensions (range, 0 to 6).
Measures of lifestyle modification including attendance at group intervention sessions, daily adherence to caloric intake goals and change in average daily moderate-vigorous physical activity were assessed at baseline, 6 months and 12 months.
The results were presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions.
Kline and colleagues reported that mean sleep health score was 4.5 at baseline and 4.5 at 6 months.
At 0 to 6 months, intervention attendance was 79.4%; adherence to caloric intake goals was 35.6% of days; change in average daily moderate-vigorous physical activity was 8.7 minutes per day. At 6 to 12 months, intervention attendance was 62.3%; adherence to caloric intake goals was 21.1% of days; change in average daily moderate-vigorous physical activity was 3.7 minutes per day.
The researchers reported that higher sleep health score was associated with improved rates of attendance at group intervention sessions (beta = 2.71; P = .038), adherence to caloric intake goals (beta = 4.6; P < .001) and a nonsignificant trend toward greater change in average daily moderate-vigorous physical activity (beta = 1.41; P = .088).
Moreover, increased sleep regularity was associated with intervention attendance and caloric intake; increased sleep satisfaction was associated with caloric intake; and increased sleep duration with average daily moderate-vigorous physical activity (P for all < .05).
“We had hypothesized that sleep would be associated with lifestyle modification; however, we didn’t expect to see an association between sleep health and all three of our measures of lifestyle modification,” Kline said. “Although we did not intervene on sleep health in this study, these results suggest that optimizing sleep may lead to better lifestyle modification adherence.
“One question of interest for future research is whether we can increase adherence to lifestyle modifications — and, ultimately, increase weight loss — if we improve a person’s sleep health,” he said.
Reference:
- A good night’s sleep may make it easier to stick to exercise and diet goals, study found. newsroom.heart.org/news/a-good-nights-sleep-may-make-it-easier-to-stick-to-exercise-and-diet-goals-study-found. Published March 3, 2023. Accessed March 10, 2023.
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Kline CE, et al. Abstract 472. Presented at: Epidemiology, Prevention, Lifestyle & Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions; Feb. 28-March 3, 2023; Boston.
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