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John Cleese’s classic “silly walk” burns more calories than a normal gait
Walking like John Cleese’s character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness.
“Half a century ago, the [Ministry of Silly Walks] skit might have unwittingly touched on a powerful way to enhance cardiovascular fitness in adults,” the authors wrote. “Had an initiative to promote inefficient movement been adopted in the early 1970s, we might now be living among a healthier society.”
The BMJ’s Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still “adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue.” Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl’s 1981 book George’s Marvelous Medicine. (It’s very toxic indeed.) The most widely read was 1999’s infamous “Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal.” (We wrote about the paper in 2019 to mark the 20th anniversary of its publication.)
Monty Python‘s classic “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit.
As we’ve reported previously, the “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch first aired on September 15, 1970, on BBC One. It opens with Mr. Teabag buying a newspaper on his way to work—which takes him a bit longer than usual since his walk “has become rather sillier recently.” Waiting for him in his office is a gentleman named Mr. Putey (Michael Palin), who is seeking a grant from the Ministry to develop his own silly walk. Putey demonstrates his silly walk-in-progress, but Teabag isn’t immediately impressed. “It’s not particularly silly, is it?” he says. “I mean, the right leg isn’t silly at all, and the left leg merely does a forward aerial half-turn every alternate step.” Putey insists that a government grant would allow him to make the walk very silly indeed. Teabag eventually offers him a research fellowship on the Anglo-French silly walk. The sketch cuts to a pair of Frenchmen demonstrating this “La Marche Futile.”
In 2020, two scientists at Dartmouth College performed a gait analysis of the various silly walks on display, publishing their findings in the journal Gait and Posture. They studied both Putey’s and Teabag’s gait cycles in the video of the original 1970 televised sketch, as well as Teabag’s gaits from a 1980 live stage performance in Los Angeles. They found that Teabag’s silly walk is much more variable than a normal human walk—6.7 times as much—while Putey’s walk-in-progress is only 3.3 times more variable.
But according to the authors of this latest paper, the 2020 study didn’t measure the caloric expenditure of those silly gaits. So Glenn Gaesser of Arizona State University and his co-authors decided “to fill this vital research gap.” The authors note that humans have evolved to “move in increasingly efficient ways,” but when it comes to cardiovascular fitness, “inefficiency of movement might be a desired trait.” They thought it might be possible to decrease the energy efficiency by adopting a more inefficient gait, thereby boosting cardiovascular fitness without having to exercise for a longer period of time. They dubbed their approach PEMPA: practice of effort maximization in physical activity.
For their study, Gaesser et al. recruited 13 healthy adults (six women and seven men) between the ages of 22 and 71 years old. The subjects completed three walking trials on an indoor track: one walking with their usual gait and chosen pace, one walking (to the best of their ability) in the manner of Teabag, and a third attempting to walk like Putey. All the subjects wore portable metabolic measurement systems to measure oxygen uptake (ml/kg/min), energy expenditure (kcal/kg/min), and exercise intensity (METs). And it sounds like most of the subjects enjoyed the experience.
Enlarge / Graph showing the measured energy expenditure (kcal/kg/min; 1 kcal=4.18 kj) during participants’ usual walking and inefficient walking in men and women.
G.A. Gaesser et al., 2022
“We did not measure minutes spent laughing or number of smiles as secondary outcomes while walking inefficiently,” the authors wrote. “Smiling during the inefficient walking trials could not be observed due to participants’ mouths being obscured by the facemask worn during data collection. However, all participants were noticeably smiling upon removal of the facemask. Moreover, bursts of laughter from the participants were frequently noted by the supervising investigator, almost always when participants were engaging in the Teabag walk.”
The results: For both men and women, walking like Teabag resulted in significantly greater energy expenditure—about 2.5 times more than regular walking or walking like Putey. In fact, the Teabag walk showed an energy intensity of eight METs, which amounts to vigorously intense exercise. Plus, it’s fun, though one must be willing to look a bit silly.
“At present, we cannot advocate generalizing the findings of this research and general suggestion to decrease efficiency in movement to other forms of exercise such as mountaineering, water sports (except aquatic aerobics), or urban cycling,” the authors concluded. “Inefficient dancing has been around for generations but, too often, that lone innovator at your local nightclub or on your cruise ship has been the subject of derision rather than justifiable admiration (with the notable exception of break dancing).”
Listing image by BBC
Eating Late Can Change How You Burn Calories And Store Fat, Depressing Study Finds : ScienceAlert
A new study suggests eating later in the day can directly impact our biological weight regulation in three key ways: through the number of calories that we burn; our hunger levels; and the way our bodies store fat.
With obesity now affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, this is a valuable insight into how the risk of becoming obese could be lowered in a relatively simple way – just by eating our meals a few hours earlier.
Earlier studies had already identified a link between the timing of meals and weight gain, but here the researchers wanted to look at that link more closely, as well as teasing out the biological reasons behind it.
“We wanted to test the mechanisms that may explain why late eating increases obesity risk,” says neuroscientist Frank Scheer, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“Previous research by us and others had shown that late eating is associated with increased obesity risk, increased body fat, and impaired weight loss success. We wanted to understand why.”
The research was tightly controlled, and involved 16 participants with a body mass index (BMI) in the overweight or obese range.
Each volunteer went through two different experiments lasting six days, with their sleeping and eating tightly controlled beforehand, and several weeks between each test.
In one experiment, the participants kept to a strict schedule of three meals a day around the normal times – breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm and dinner around 6pm.
In the other, the three meals were shifted back (the first around 1pm and the last around 9pm) – so lunch, dinner and supper.
Through blood samples, survey questions and other measurements, the team was able to make a number of observations.
When eating later, levels of the hormone leptin – which tells us when we’re full – were lower across 24 hours, indicating participants may have felt hungrier. What’s more, calories were being burned at a slower rate.
The tests also showed that adipose tissue gene expression – which affects how the body stores fat – increased the adipogenesis process that builds fat tissues, and decreased the lipolysis process that breaks fat down.
Here, we’re looking at a combination of physiological and molecular mechanisms pushing up the obesity risk.
“We isolated these effects by controlling for confounding variables like caloric intake, physical activity, sleep, and light exposure, but in real life, many of these factors may themselves be influenced by meal timing,” says Scheer.
Of course obesity can lead to other health issues, including diabetes and cancer, and so finding ways to stop it from developing in the first place would make a huge difference to the health of the global population.
What this study shows is that eating earlier in the day can impact three key drivers of the way our bodies balance energy and the subsequent obesity risk – and it’s a change that’s perhaps simpler for some people to manage than sticking to a diet or exercise regime.
In the future, the team wants to see research involving more women (just 5 of the 16 volunteers were women in this case), as well as research that analyzes how changes in bedtime in relation to eating time might also factor into these processes.
“In larger scale studies, where tight control of all these factors is not feasible, we must at least consider how other behavioral and environmental variables alter these biological pathways underlying obesity risk,” says Scheer.
The research has been published in Cell Metabolism.
What exercise burns the most calories? It’s right at your feet.
Bird and owner play game of tag that rivals ‘Angry Birds’
A man plays tag with his bird in his North Carolina home.
Animalkind, USA TODAY
Whether you’re trying to lose weight, maintain an organized exercise schedule or are simply curious, knowing how to burn the most calories can be important for picking an activity.
It’s essential to remember your body needs calories for day-to-day functions. In fact, humans burn calories with every movement and activity.
The recommended caloric intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men, but this depends on several factors. Age, lifestyle, height and weight can affect the energy you need, and hormones and medication can affect how much energy you burn.
Trying to lose weight?: How to lose belly fat naturally
Shifting the narrative: Is our view of weight loss starting to change?
Exercise that burns the most calories
According to Healthline, running burns the most calories. A tried and true exercise that requires little more than your legs and the open road, running burns just over 800 calories for a 155-pound adult per hour. While it depends on intensity and length of the workout as well as your weight, Healthline estimates a 125-pound adult would burn 652 calories in an hour and a 185-pound adult would burn about 965 calories.
Another running-esque workout that burns a lot of calories in a short amount of time is high-knee running, Healthline reports. You can perform this exercise by jogging in place while bringing your knees up toward your chest as high as you can.
You can also try jumping rope to engage your endurance in a different way. Jumping rope burns around 667-990 calories per hour, according to Women’s Health Magazine. This childhood game can make a comeback into your workout routine and strengthen your calves, ankles, core strength and endurance.
How many calories to eat per day?: The USDA’s guidelines for men, women and children
How many calories does swimming burn?
Swimming is a leisure activity many enjoy, but it can also be turned into a primary form of exercise. According to Healthline, an hour-long pool session will burn about 400 calories or as much as 700 calories for a 150-pound adult. The freestyle stroke will burn the most calories because it’s the fastest, Healthline says.
How are calories burned?
Calories are used to give your body the energy it needs to function. The body combines the calories in food and beverages with oxygen to release this energy and the number of calories it uses is known as your metabolic rate. Metabolism is a natural process that can be affected by age, sex and body type.
Physical exercise, like any movement, burns calories. This means walking or even doing household work can burn calories, according to Mayo Clinic.
The science behind losing or maintaining weight is not as simple as burning the calories you intake. In fact, a study published in August 2021 found that metabolism is not constant throughout a human’s life and changes from newborn age to older adulthood. It also dispelled the myth that men have faster metabolisms than women. They actually burn more calories per day because of more muscle in the body.
Just curious?: We’re here to help you answer life’s everyday questions
How many calories do you burn sleeping?
While it depends on factors like weight and age, humans burn about 50 calories per hour of sleep. According to the Sleep Foundation, your body burns the most calories during rapid eye movement sleep when your heart rate increases.
Stay healthy: Try these 3 tips to balance exercise, diet and sleep
3 Tips to Boost Metabolism and Burn More Calories: Expert
- Healthy habits like muscle-building exercise and good sleep can boost metabolism, an endocrinologist says.
- But common calorie-burning strategies like eating certain foods or meal timing aren’t evidence-based.
- While caffeine increases metabolism slightly, supplements in general won’t lead to significant results.
If you want to lose weight, a healthy metabolism is a key factor, and certain lifestyle changes can help or hurt your ability to burn calories over time, according to Dr. Deena Adimoolam, a specialist in endocrinology, metabolism and obesity medicine.
The most important changes involve regular exercise, especially strength training, to build more muscle, as well as getting adequate rest and recovery, she said.
However, you should steer clear of products or programs that promise results from specific foods, meal plans, supplements, or even “metabolism-boosting” workouts, since many aren’t evidence based.
Here are three habits to support a healthy metabolism, and four popular tips that don’t work, according to science.
Time-restricted eating no better than counting calories, study finds
“Our data suggest that caloric intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects of a time-restricted eating regimen,” according to researchers at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China.
“Bottom line, the determinant of weight loss, as well as reductions in body fat, visceral fat, blood pressure, and glucose and lipid levels, is dependent on reducing calorie intake, regardless of the distribution of food and beverages consumed throughout the day,” said Alice Lichtenstein, director and senior scientist at Tufts University’s Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, via email. She was not involved in the study.
One group was told to limit their daily food intake to 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for men, and 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for women. Men and women in the other group were told to eat the same amount of calories, but to eat only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
To track compliance, study participants were asked to keep food diaries and photograph all food they ate.
At the end of the year, both groups lost weight — about 14 to 18 pounds (6.4 to 8.2 kilograms) — but eating on a time-restricted schedule didn’t produce any significant difference in weight loss between the two groups.
Nor was there any real difference in other markers of weight loss, such as BMI (body mass index, a popular way of measuring weight), waist circumference, body fat or metabolic risk factors such as insulin resistance and blood pressure.
Prior research showed benefits
Prior research had shown advantages to time restriction. A 2020 review of human and animal studies had found benefits to restricting calories to a shortened period of the day, including a reduction in blood pressure, weight loss and improved longevity.
However, a number of those studies were in mice and those in humans were of much shorter duration, mere months.
The results of the year-long clinical trial are not surprising, said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine and nutrition, who was not involved in the study.
“Restricting time instead of calories does not contribute metabolic magic; rather, it is a form of discipline that helps to control calories,” said Katz via email.
“My favorite approach is to focus on the quality of foods and diet, and then let quantity control take care of itself. A diet made up mostly of whole, wholesome plant foods is intrinsically satiating at low calorie levels,” he said.
“Decisions on the approach used to restrict calorie intake should be determined by what works best for an individual within the context of their lifestyle,” said Lichtenstein, who is also a Gershoff Professor of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “The most important factor is identifying an approach that is sustainable in the long term.”
Cutting calories linked to gene that may help create a treatment to extend human lifespans
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Scientists may be on the verge of a treatment that can extend the human lifespan — thanks to a protein tied to how much you eat. This gene appears to have a connection to calorie restriction however, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine believe they can harness its benefits without the need for strict calorie counts by dieters.
The team says decades of experiments in flies, worms, and rodents have revealed that cutting down on food increases lifespan. Now, the new study involving humans and mice has identified that switching off a specific gene stopped diet-induced weight gain and age-related inflammation.
The discovery opens the door to developing medications that target the key protein PLA2G7.
“We found that reducing PLA2G7 in mice yielded benefits that were similar to what we saw with calorie restriction in humans,” says lead author Dr. Olga Spadaro, a former research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine, in a university release.
Specifically, the animals’ thymus glands, which make immune system T cells, remained functional for longer. They also did not become obese or suffer from illness.
“Because we know that chronic low-grade inflammation in humans is a major trigger of many chronic diseases and, therefore, has a negative effect on life span,” says senior author Professor Vishwa Dixit, “Here we’re asking: What is calorie restriction doing to the immune and metabolic systems and if it is indeed beneficial, how can we harness the endogenous pathways that mimic its effects in humans?”
The findings, published in the journal Science, offers hope of creating a new “fountain of youth” treatment, focusing on the effects of PLA2G7.
Protecting the thymus gland
The results are based on a first-of-its-kind trial called CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy). Researchers split more than 200 participants into two groups, including one that cut their consumption of calories by 14 percent. Over the next two years, the analysis suggested calorie restriction also has long-term health benefits for humans.
In particular, MRI scans showed the thymus gland had less fat and stayed more productive. There was also no change in the other volunteers who carried on eating as normal. The gland declines faster than any other in the body. By the age of 40, 70 percent of the thymus is fatty and non-functional.
“As we get older, we begin to feel the absence of new T cells because the ones we have left aren’t great at fighting new pathogens,” Dixit explains. “That’s one of the reasons why elderly people are at greater risk for illness.”
“The fact that this organ can be rejuvenated is, in my view, stunning because there is very little evidence of that happening in humans,” the researcher continues. “That this is even possible is very exciting.”
Surprisingly, there were no changes in gene expression because the action took place in the tissue microenvironment, rather than the blood cells. Study authors measured the participants’ body fat, or adipose tissue, at the beginning of the study and then after one and two years.
“We found remarkable changes in the gene expression of adipose tissue after one year that were sustained through year two,” Prof. Dixit says.
“This revealed some genes that were implicated in extending life in animals but also unique calorie restriction-mimicking targets that may improve metabolic and anti-inflammatory response in humans.”
Getting the benefits of cutting calories without actually doing it?
It turns out that calorie restriction significantly inhibited PLA2G7. Immune cells called macrophages produce this protein, which fuels inflammation. Lowering levels of PLA2G7 protected aging mice.
“These findings demonstrate that PLA2G7 is one of the drivers of the effects of calorie restriction,” Prof. Dixit reports. “Identifying these drivers helps us understand how the metabolic system and the immune system talk to each other, which can point us to potential targets that can improve immune function, reduce inflammation, and potentially even enhance healthy lifespan.”
It might be possible to manipulate PLA2G7 and get the benefits without having to actually restrict calories, which can be difficult and even harmful for some people.
“There’s so much debate about what type of diet is better — low carbohydrates or fat, increased protein, intermittent fasting, etc. — and I think time will tell which of these are important,” Prof. Dixit concludes.
“But CALERIE is a very well-controlled study that shows a simple reduction in calories, and no specific diet, has a remarkable effect in terms of biology and shifting the immuno-metabolic state in a direction that’s protective of human health. So from a public health standpoint, I think it gives hope.”
South West News Service writer Mark Waghorn contributed to this report.
How Getting Extra Sleep May Help You Eat Fewer Calories
- A new report adds to the growing amount of evidence that sufficient sleep is a crucial ingredient to overall health and well-being.
- Prior research has found that sleep restriction causes people to eat more.
- In the new study, people who increased their sleep ate fewer calories overall.
A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Feb. 7 finds that getting more sleep each night may help facilitate weight loss.
The report adds to the growing amount of evidence that sufficient sleep is a crucial ingredient to overall health and well-being.
By increasing their sleep by about an hour a night, study participants reduced their caloric intake by an average of 270 kilocalories (kcal) a day.
Prior research has found that sleep restriction causes people to eat more and increases the chances of weight gain over time.
According to researchers, these new findings demonstrate that healthy sleep habits may lead to weight loss over time.
“Our findings suggest that getting sufficient sleep could be a game changer in our battle with [the] obesity epidemic as a society,” study researcher Dr. Estra Tasali, director of the UChicago Sleep Center at the University of Chicago Medicine, told Healthline.
Researchers recruited 80 adults, ages 21 to 40, with obesity who habitually slept fewer than 6.5 hours a night.
Participants received a customized sleep hygiene counseling session. They slept in their own beds and tracked their sleep with wearable devices.
They kept their normal routines and weren’t advised to change their diet or exercise habits.
On average, researchers advised the participants to increase their sleep by 1.2 hours to spend 8.5 hours in bed each night.
Their caloric intake and daily energy stores were measured via a urine-based test.
Compared with the control participants, those who increased their sleep reduced their caloric intake, on average, by 270 kcals a day.
According to researchers, this amount could translate to a loss of 26 pounds over 3 years.
This study is in line with prior research connecting sleep deprivation and disruptions in appetite regulation and weight gain.
“Prior research showed that sleep loss leads to increases [in] food intake in the laboratory setting and weight gain. In our study, we showed for the first time that in [a] real-word setting, objectively tracked caloric intake is decreased when sleep is extended in individuals who habitually sleep less than 6.5 hours,” Tasali said.
Tasali said there could be several potential mechanisms that can explain why more sleep leads to less caloric intake.
Sleep is known to impact appetite-regulating hormones.
“Research has shown that sleep deprivation can increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol and decrease levels of the hormone leptin, which controls appetite, in the body,” said Ryan Fiorenzi, a certified sleep coach and founder of StartSleeping.org.
When the body doesn’t get the signals it’s used to receiving in its typical sleep-wake cycle, it can try to compensate in other ways and seek out high calorie foods, Fiorenzi added.
Furthermore, sleep can affect circadian rhythm factors and impact when people eat.
Restricting sleep can have serious health consequences and contribute to the development of various health conditions, including obesity.
Fiorenzi said there have been several studies that have found a direct link between short sleep duration and obesity, one of which found that people who slept fewer than 6 hours a night were more likely to have obesity than people who slept more than 7 hours a night.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that good sleep is critical to health and well-being — including weight loss. And, that poor sleep is a significant risk factor for weight gain and metabolic disorders,” Fiorenzi said.
A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that getting more sleep each night can facilitate weight loss.
Participants who slept 1.2 hours more each night reduced their caloric intake, on average, by 270 kcals.
Over a period of 3 years, this could translate to a reduction in 26 pounds, researchers say.
This study adds to the growing evidence that sleep is a crucial component of overall health and well-being.
Cut nearly 300 calories a day by doing something you already do
That’s the startling outcome of a randomized trial that asked young, overweight adults who typically slept less than six and a half hours to try to sleep about eight and a half hours a night for two weeks.
Some of the study participants cut their intake by 500 calories each day, the study found.
“This is almost like a game changer for weight loss or weight maintenance,” said study author Dr. Esra Tasali, an associate professor of medicine who directs the Sleep Research Center at the University of Chicago.
The researchers projected their findings into the future. They found that eating 270 fewer calories a day would translate to a loss of 26 pounds over three years, all by doing nothing more than getting additional sleep.
“A small intervention you can do to yourself to increase or preserve your sleep duration so you are not sleep deprived can have an significant impact on healthy weight,” Tasali said.
One of the strengths of the study was the fact that it happened in a real-world setting, not a sleep lab, and used an objective urine test to measure calories instead of relying on people’s recall of what they ate.
“This is a very well done study answering an important question,” said Dr. Bhanuprakash Kolla, a sleep psychiatrist and neurologist in the Center for Sleep Medicine and the Division of Addiction Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He was not involved in the study.
“They clearly showed that as you increase the amount of sleep, energy intake reduced and this in turn led to modest reductions in weight,” Kolla said. “It is likely that if this were extended, there could be more significant changes in weight.”
Sleep and hunger are related
Just how does sleeping longer help you lose weight? One reason is the impact lack of sleep has on two key hormones that control hunger and satiety: ghrelin and leptin.
Ghrelin stimulates hunger and has been shown to increase with sleep deprivation. Its partner, leptin, tells us when we are full.
“Leptin has been shown to decrease with sleep restriction. Therefore when we are sleep deprived we have less of this hormone and therefore less of a brake on our appetite,” Kolla said.
And it’s not just people who are overweight who find themselves craving carbs and adding pounds when they are sleep deprived, said Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of sleep and preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
“Studies that observed increased appetite after sleep loss were in people who were not overweight. Getting sufficient sleep has health benefits for everyone regardless of body weight,” Knutson said.
Another way poor sleep impacts our eating choices can be found in the brain’s reward centers, the spot that gives us pleasurable feelings we want to repeat.
“The reward centers in the brain get more activated when you are sleep deprived, which increases your craving for carbohydrates or junk food or a higher overall food intake,” Tasali said.
Then there’s the problem of insulin resistance, which increases with sleep deprivation and leads to weight gain.
“Several laboratory studies have shown that if you were to do a sugar tolerance test in the morning to sleep-deprived individual versus well-rested individual, you would see a pre-diabetic, insulin-resistant state in the morning,” Tasali said.
An easy intervention
How difficult was it for people to add more sleep to their lives? Not that hard at all, Tasali said. Each person underwent an hour-long counseling session about their sleeping style.
“It was very personalized, focused on trying to review people’s lifestyles, their work-related limitations, their family members, their pets, children and bedtime routines,” she said. “Then we talked to them about improving their sleep hygiene, such as putting away electronics before bed.”
Sleep experts advise that any blue light emitting devices — smartphones, laptops and televisions, to name a few — be put away 45 minutes to an hour before bed. That’s because blue light stops the release of melatonin, the body’s sleepy time hormone.
Other sleep hygiene tips include sleeping in a cool bedroom (about 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 to 20 degrees Celsius); skipping spicy food and alcohol before bed; dampening sounds; and having a soothing bedtime ritual, which could include taking a warm bath or shower, reading a book, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, yoga, meditation, or light stretches.
Tasali said she saw changes after just one week of the two-week sleep improvement program.
“Some of them said to me, ‘I thought I was going to be less productive. You’re giving me so much time in bed, how am I going to do all this work that I’m supposed to do?’ And at the end of the two weeks they kept telling me that they were more productive, because they were more energized and more alert.”
One of the study’s limitations, Kolla said, is that none of the subjects suffered from insomnia or other major sleep disorders, which impact millions of people.
“These are only subjects who do not have sleep disturbances but have what we would call behaviorally induced insufficient sleep,” he said. “While the goal was to extend to 8.5 hours, it is quite likely that a majority of people do not require that much amount of sleep. So future work must look at participant-specific information to see who is likely to benefit from this kind of intervention.”
Despite those limitations, he said it’s clear that people who are attempting to lose weight should pay attention “to the amount of sleep that they are getting — avoiding voluntary sleep deprivation is going to play an important role.”
Why Aren’t All Calories Created Equal? A Dietitian Explains
A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, at least from a thermodynamic standpoint. It’s defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius (2.2 pounds by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
But when it comes to health and your body’s energy balance, not all calories are equal.
For example, some studies have reported that diets that are high-protein, low-carbohydrate, or a combination of the two do yield greater weight loss than diets with other levels of fat, protein, and carbs.
If every calorie in food were the same, you wouldn’t expect to see weight-loss differences among people who eat the same number of calories that are doled out in different types of food.
Dietitians like me know there are many factors that influence what a calorie means for your body. Here’s what we understand about calories and nutrition so far.
Energy actually available to your body
In the late 1800s, chemist W.O. Atwater and his colleagues devised a system to figure out how much energy – that is, how many calories – various foods contain. Basically, he burned up food samples and recorded how much energy they released in the form of heat.
Not every bit of energy in food that can combust in the lab is actually available to your body, though. What scientists call metabolizable energy is the difference between the total energy of the food consumed and the energy that passes out of your body, undigested, in feces and urine.
For each of the three macronutrients – proteins, carbohydrates, and fats – Atwood devised a percentage of the calories they contained that would actually be metabolizable.
(Buchholz and Schoeller, Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 2004)
According to the Atwater system, one gram of each macronutrient is estimated to provide a certain number of calories. The US Department of Agriculture still uses these calculations today to come up with an official calorie number for every food.
How much energy you use
What you eat can affect what scientists call your body’s energy expenditure. That’s how much energy it takes to keep you alive – energy you use breathing, digesting, keeping your blood flowing, and so on – along with what you exert moving your body. You might have heard this referred to as metabolism.
Diet quality can alter the body’s energy expenditure, which is also called the thermic effect of food. For example, in one study, people eating the same number of calories per day but on either a low-carbohydrate diet or a low-fat diet had differences in total energy expenditure of about 300 calories per day. Those eating very low-carb diets used the most energy, while those eating low-fat diets used the least.
In another study, high-fat diets led to lower total energy expenditure than high-carb diets did. Other researchers reported that although substituting carbs for fat did not alter energy expenditure, people who increased their protein intake to 30-35 percent of their diet used more energy.
In general, diets high in carbohydrates, fat, or both produce a 4-8 percent increase in energy expenditure, while meals high in protein cause an 11-14 percent increase above the resting metabolic rate. Protein has a higher thermic effect because it’s harder for the body to break down. Although these variations aren’t huge, they could contribute to the obesity epidemic by encouraging a subtle average weight gain.
Quality of the calories you eat
Dietitians pay attention to a food’s glycemic index and glycemic load – that is, how quickly and how much it will increase your blood glucose levels. A rise in blood glucose triggers the release of insulin, which in turn influences energy metabolism and storage of excess energy as fat.
Foods like white rice, cakes, cookies, and chips are all high on the glycemic index/load. Green vegetables, raw peppers, mushrooms, and legumes are all low on the glycemic index/load. There is some evidence to suggest that foods lower on the glycemic index/load may be better for keeping blood sugar levels regulated – regardless of the calories they contain.
Reward centers in the brain light up when people eat high glycemic index/load foods, highlighting the pleasurable and addictive effect of foods like candy or white breads.
The fiber content of food is another thing to consider. Your body can’t digest fiber – found in plant foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans – for energy. So foods high in fiber tend to have less metabolizable energy and can help you feel full on fewer calories.
Empty calories – those from foods with minimal or no nutritional value – are another factor to consider. Things like white sugar, soft drinks, and many ultra-processed snacks don’t provide much, if any, benefit in the form of protein, vitamins, or minerals along with their calories.
The opposite would be nutrient-dense foods that are high in nutrients or fiber while still being relatively low in calories. Examples are spinach, apples, and beans.
And don’t think of empty calories as neutral. Nutritionists consider them harmful calories because they can have a negative effect on health.
Foods that are the biggest contributors to weight gain are potato chips, potatoes, sugar-sweetened beverages, and meats, both processed and unprocessed.
On the other hand, foods that are inversely associated with weight gain are vegetables, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and yogurt.
More to health than calories and weight
It is indisputable that for weight loss, the difference between the number of calories consumed and the number of calories exerted through exercise is the most important factor.
But don’t fool yourself. While weight plays a role in health and longevity, weight loss alone doesn’t equate to health.
Yes, some high-protein diets seem to promote weight loss at least in the short term. But epidemiologists know that in areas where people live the longest – close to 100 years on average – they eat a primarily plant-based diet, with very low or no animal-based protein and low or moderate fat in the form of mono- and polyunsaturated fats.
I often hear friends or clients say things like “It’s those carbs that are making me fat” or “I need to go on a low-carb diet.”
But these complaints drive dietitians like me, well, nuts.
Carbohydrates include foods like Coca-Cola and candy canes, but also apples and spinach. Cutting down on simple carbs like soft drinks, refined-flour bakery items, pasta, and sweets will definitely have a positive impact on health. But eliminating carbohydrates like vegetables and fruit will have the opposite effect.
A plant-based diet high in plant-based protein and carbohydrates, mostly from vegetables, fruit, nuts, and legumes, is the healthiest diet researchers know of for longevity and prevention of chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, hypertension, and many other conditions.
The modern Western diet suffers from an increase in quantity of calories consumed with a concurrent decrease in the quality of calories consumed.
And researchers now know that calories from different foods have different effects on fullness, insulin response, the process of turning carbs to body fat, and metabolic energy expenditure.
Where your health is concerned, count more on the quality of the calories you consume than the calorie count. 
Terezie Tolar-Peterson, Associate Professor of Food Science, Nutrition & Health Promotion, Mississippi State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.