My Bariatric Experience at the Scottsdale Weight Loss Center
I have been treating overweight patients all my medical career and full time over the last 3 years. I have been saying for a few years that sleep is an underrated part of weight loss. We all consider diet and exercise to be the most important. I think sleep is just as important and just last week a study was released showing the important triad of weight loss: diet, exercise and sleep.
My experience on this goes back a few years. I had a very analytical patient who worked unusual hours with very early conference calls. He kept track of the number of hours of sleep, hours of exercise and calories eaten each day. If he was doing well with all three, he was losing weight great. If he was doing any two of them, sleep and exercise but eating a little more or exercise and diet but not sleep, he maintained his weight pretty good. If he was only doing one of them, he was then gaining weight.
If you follow our blog you may recall an old posting on obesity and sleep from 2008. I just want to restate that these beliefs are still the same and more studies now prove it. We require seven hours of sleep. Several studies showed that those who slept less than 7 hrs per night were much more likely to be overweight and if you sleep as little as 5 hours, 80% of those persons are overweight.