Are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying a diet that seems effective, but isn't working quite as well as you'd hoped? Is your weight loss pill doing a fantastic job, but something in the back of your mind is telling you that there's something else you can do? Is all that exercise you're doing cutting into the time that you should be spending asleep? Well, if recent studies and statistical data is to be believed, sleep ? in the right amounts ? might play a much larger role than you'd believe when one is going for maintainable weight loss over an extended period of time. Yes, sleep appears to be helpful in avoiding weight gain as well.

This is, like so many issues related to weight loss and personal fitness, a matter of balance. Not sleeping enough can slow down the metabolism, burning fewer calories even with the same sustained level of physical activity. However, sleeping too much can also slow down the metabolism since the body needs fewer nutrients to operate while in a sleeping state. Recently, there was a study on whether or not the right amount of sleep for keeping weight off existed, supposedly fueled by the problems related to preventing obesity.

According to the study, it appears that the number of hours slept did play a role in whether or not the person experienced weight loss or weight gain. The data showed that getting only six hours of sleep contributed to someone gaining or retaining weight. The effect was found to become more pronounced the less sleep the person got. The same appeared to apply for people who slept for about nine hours or more in a single night. The data was obtained by asking the people to alter their sleeping habits, rather than any other aspects of their daily life. The eight-hour range, which has long been the recommended amount of sleep that the average person should get, appears to contribute to the ability to not retain excess weight, though whether or not it might have more direct benefits for weight loss is unknown.

The study also found some interesting correlations. For example, the people that were the most active but slept the least had an increase of 58% in their chances of retaining excess weight. The ones that slept longer, despite maintaining a comparable level of physical activity, fared poorer, with an average of about 94% of them retaining and gaining weight. Energy intake and metabolic rates were noted to be similar throughout the whole group, thus minimizing the chances of certain biological factors corrupting the data one way or another. However, the study does have a few glaring flaws.

For example, there was no attempt to record whether or not any of the participants had any dietary or sleep-related disorders in the present or past. Such information could easily have had an effect on the outcome. There have also been questions regarding the number of test subjects, which has been cited as being too small to provide a viable source of data. However, it has prompted some researchers to take a closer look into the connection between weight loss, weight gain, and sleeping patterns.