Sleep Restriction Therapy and Diet

[dee]

So based on my understanding of sleep restriction therapy, here's my summary:
-limit sleep and time in bed to minimum
-have sleep efficiency increase
-efficiency is retained after therapy

Compare this to calorie restriction diets. It sounds exactly the same, so what if, this occurs:
-limit calories and food to minimum
-have calorie efficiency increase
-efficiency is retained after diet

This could occur for both lower resting metabolic rate, and lower absorption efficiency. Yes, everyone knew that short term diets don't help lose weight in the long run, but maybe, just maybe, we are teaching people how to gain weight in the long run with some acute stress (short term dieting). What if all of this body fat setpoint stuff simply occurs because of our reactions to weight loss and gain, as in the setpoint is just a transient stage of the overcompensation from the diet and that rebound causes us to take other measures, thus delaying the overcompensated state with more dieting but putting everyone spiraling towards slow but sure weight gain? Any thoughts?

P.S. I haven't been posting much cause I've been studying and doing a few n=1 fitness experiments. I'm not dead.

[shadowfoot]

Interesting thoughts, dee. It seems perfectly logical that the body would respond to calorie restriction by decreasing number of calories burned (metabolic rate), increasing absorption efficiency (so we absorb more calories from food), reducing caloric output (translates into less energy), etc. These factors increase the ability to gain fat in the future. For example, this stuey (http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v18/n3/full/oby2009312a.html) concluded that mild calorie restriction actually made rats gain weight (presumably due to metabolic starvation tactics). Also observing the failure rate with diets and the tendency for people to rebound and gain back more weight indicates that the picture is quite a bit more complicated than we might think.

Certainly I think that weight can be lost without intentional calorie restriction (through flavor control) for some people, just as I know I sleep better if I use electric lights minimally and simply allow my body to listen to the light cues of my environment. In cases where these work, I see it as the body returning to a natural state as its environment is put more in tune with what the body naturally expects.

But then there are probably people for whom flavor control wouldn't work, or it would simply have the same effect as intentional calorie restriction in terms of slowing metabolism etc. In those cases there is probably some other more powerful metabolic factor going on, be it mild hypothyroidism or leptin resistance. In these people the damage is beyond simply behavior or basic response to a stimulus and requires a different approach. What that is I don't know.

All in all, the more I research and learn the more I learn the more Matt Stone's ideas on metabolism seem to resonate with me, both from a research standpoint and from personal experience.

And don't worry about not posting. Not that much happened without you.

[dee]

Haha. I was thinking about Matt Stone's ideas when writing the first thing. I still don't like all of his ideas, but still.

That study was exactly what I was hoping to see (on the rats and the weight gain) based on my guess that the body fat set point is just transitional. I believe that it just occurs for people because once they realize they are regaining weight, they compensate by reducing calories again, and that that averages out to something that looks like a set point (you know how statistics does that stuff). (Just repeating my point to try and clarify).

My question now is is it dangerous to recommend calorie restriction?

Another question that could arise is how does this affect intermittent fasting? One could argue that short term and long term calorie restriction causes the body to respond differently, but you never know.