Hacker News Reader

Comment by catotheyoungest | Hacker News Reader

This is strictly anecdotal, and I would honestly love to see this subjected to a rigorous study, but I lost twenty pounds without additional exercise or dietary changes in the last six months just by having a sleep study done, getting diagnosed with sleep apnea, and being put on a CPAP machine.

How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?

View on HN

Cannot comment on depression. But from personal experience and after reading Why we sleep, my understanding is that to get maximum benefits from diet and exercise, a good sleep is a prerequisite. This is paramount when you're doing these things for losing weight. I don't see good sleep being recommend enough whenever people embark on a weight-loss journey.

So true. I try not to eat anything after work, not always but usually. During daytime a softdrink with sugar is ok, but also usually after work I drink just water. I eat a bit something for breakfast, even small snacks during the whole day, eat a proper lunch and that's it .. I do sport two evenings a week so I can't eat anyway something before. So why should I eat dinner if I do nothing at home .. If I'm tired and don't go to bed .. wathever reason .. I suddenly start to eat a lot of snacks .. not because I'm really hungry .. just because of be bored.

I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg.

The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue.

20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..

I've eaten really well for ages: particularly when it comes to low-fiber carbs, I just have no interest, let alone the intense addiction most people seem to have The exception was my famous sweet tooth, the indulgence of which probably wiped out half the advantages I was seeing from eating well. Since mostly fixing a sleep disorder that I had, my sweet tooth has completely vanished. I had some sense of this, but I wasn't enjoying the sugar as much as I was craving the accompanying dopamine rush, in the same way that I was a more frequent drug user when I still had the sleep disorder.

We likely had it much worse than the average person, but I think about the same thing: most of my friends have sleep problems to some degree, and I can't imagine they're not getting a milder form of the psychological symptoms that plagued me

> How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?

There's some body chemistry where being sleep deprived can manifest itself as hunger. I forget the details, but I read about it in "Why We Sleep"[0].

When I had a sleep study done, the pre-study questionnaire seemed to have more about depression symptoms than about sleep itself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

Definitely experienced that in finals period in college where I consciously substituted sleep with calories

I always tell myself, my coworkers, and my kids "If you don't sleep, eat" (else you might go totally bonkers).

I'm really glad it did you do much good.

For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-)

More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.

Are you sure your diet did not change? Even your portions stayed the same size?

Can't speak for OP, but my appetite and then weight have steadily decreased for six years since beginning CPAP. As a person with apnea I had no idea that my constant fatigue was causing me to eat so much, or making sustained exercise so impossible, and I really didn't even understand how tired I was. Once I was getting something approximating a good night's sleep, I had more energy, which made me less hungry and more able to sustain exercise. So it was a virtuous cycle and involved the habits you're describing, but those were made possible by alleviating the underlying problem.

I've gained 15 pounds since I started using one..bummed

How did you get diagnosed?

Did an overnight study at a sleep clinic. I'd been told for years by friends that I made very weird gasping, snoring noises. After I'd been out of college a few years and realized I was fatigued literally every day despite going to sleep on time, I figured it was time to get checked.

Were you also sleepy during the day? Did you nap for hours as well?

To be honest, I'm not sure. I don't recall making any conscious changes, though I don't have the sugar jones I used to have.

So did you stop eating as much, or having fewer cravings or anything like that?

I don't know. I hadn't bothered to quantify, but my sugar jones isn't as bad as it used to be.

Is it a CPAP or an APAP?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com