Swapping one hour of sedentary wakefulness, such as watching television, for sleep could reduce daily caloric intake by roughly 6 percent, according to a University of Michigan study published in Obesity Reviews.
Researcher Michael Sivak, who leads the Human Factors Division at the U-M Transportation Research Institute, based the finding on the premise that food consumption tends to rise in proportion to the number of hours a person is awake and exposed to eating opportunities.
In a sample calculation, Sivak found that a person sleeping 7 hours and consuming 2,500 calories across the remaining 17 hours could eliminate about 147 calories daily by adding one more hour of sleep. Sustained over a year, that reduction could translate to roughly 14 pounds of lost body weight.
Sivak noted that hormones such as leptin and ghrelin have been linked in earlier research to sleep deprivation and weight gain, but argued that a straightforward behavioral factor, fewer waking hours meaning fewer chances to eat, may also play a significant role.
He suggested that for people who are both overweight and voluntarily short on sleep, substituting idle screen time with sleep could offer "a practical behavioral solution" for a broad segment of the population.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in August 2006, in its own words.